


being an avenger is kind of complicated [ABANDONED PROBABLY]

by snackbaskets



Category: Marvel
Genre: Angst and Humor, Canon-Typical Violence, Everyone Is Poly Because Avengers, Gen, M/M, Multi, POV Multiple, Panic Attacks, Team as Family, Trans Character, also literally no one is surprised but this is a fic very heavily focused on familial relationships, however long that is, i didnt know that tag existed and i LOVE it, more like canons distant cousin twice removed, not quite mcu canon or comics canon/chronology, peter is a God at making friends, shiny new hyperfocus boys lets see how far it goes, tony has two ahnds and a big heart u guys............ let him kiss evryone.., tony kisses a lot of boys, will update tags as we go on
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-16
Updated: 2019-01-08
Packaged: 2019-07-12 21:02:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16003244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snackbaskets/pseuds/snackbaskets
Summary: What happens when you take a terrorist cell, a mad scientist, a government conspiracy, and put them all in the same city as the world's strongest superhero team? A lot, apparently. Especially considering one's about ready to adopt a mutant teenager and elope with a soviet assassin. It gets a little complicated from there.i eat found family tropes for BREAKFAST and i love tony stark very much





	1. peter has a rough day

**Author's Note:**

> hey yall!! sorry for dropping right the fuck off the grid there for a while , life was bonkers, im starting a new year in college, and i guess marvel heroes are suddenly now my new Big Thing?? i might come back to overwatch eventually but for the time being marvel owns my ass so well see how far this takes me 
> 
> that being said, i havent written in a while and im gonna b rusty so feel free to point out any errors or funky spots you find
> 
> also, ive never written 4 marvel before and things might be a little wild and OOC for a bit so uh. b gentle

If Daredevil wasn’t, like, 30, Peter probably could have kissed him. It was only thanks to him he was breathing, anyway, which meant he was getting a fruit basket or some muffins, at least. But he could worry about that later. You know, when he wasn’t getting shot at? Which was kind of a funny story, all things considered: 

Peter had come to work at Stark Tower about eight months ago, and had since managed to keep his identity secret from _all_ of the Avengers-- save JARVIS, because JARVIS knew everything-- and Aunt May, despite his track record for getting thrown around on patrol and having to show up covered in bruises. Not that anybody ever noticed, because he’d gotten really, really good at using concealer. Thanks, MJ. 

They plopped him down in the student labs, at first, thanks to a generous opportunity the Maria Stark foundation had offered his community college, and he’d fully intended on keeping his head down and staying put there until he finished his degree. But Peter was also kind of smart, and really bad at making good choices, so he didn’t stay there long. Instead, he got scooted up the scientific pecking order pretty darn fast, moving from the intern’s labs to the doctorates, and all the way up to level seven in the span of a few months, knocking elbows with some of the greatest scientific minds in the community and getting access to tech he could hardly dream of. Level seven was right by the Avengers levels, too, which meant that sometimes, Dr. Banner (oh my god oh my god oh my god) would come down and check up on what people were doing. Even crazier, he was more than happy to talk radiation study with Peter, who had read just about every single piece of academia the man had ever written. Pretty soon, it turned into a regular occurence, so much so that Peter would have coffee ready before Banner even dropped by. 

Then Banner introduced him to Stark, and Peter almost lost his goddamn mind. 

He thought-- and kind of hoped-- it would end there. Stark would say “Oh, that’s neat. Cool dog, Bruce,” Peter would get his 15 seconds of fame and/or total euphoria, and he would go back to level seven where nobody really bothered him and Banner was the only person in danger of finding out about the whole Spiderman thing. Which would have been fine! He was fine with that! If anyone, Banner was a really nice guy, and if asked nicely, would probably keep it to himself that Peter ran around in hand-sewn spandex and stuck to walls in his spare time.

Of course, that wasn’t what happened, because fate absolutely hated Peter Parker, and blatantly refused to let anything go as planned for him pretty much ever.

Stark was actually impressed with him, for one; he liked the way Peter could keep up with his and Banner’s conversations even without knowing the subject very well, and probably would have let him go with a pat on the back and an occasional drop by the labs if Peter hadn’t opened his big dumb mouth and bantered back to all of Stark’s witty quips. At first, he looked kind of like Peter slapped him every time he did it, and then he apparently decided it was the best thing since sliced bread, because the close of the conversation went something along the lines of:

“You work with us, now.”

“Huh?”

“Tony--”

“You work with us. In our labs. Because I just called dibs on the child genius.”

“You-- I-- That’s not how…. Hey! I’m eighteen!”

“Tony, you could try _asking_ \--”

“See, Bruce? He’s eighteen. I can legally employ him, so it’s fine.”

And Peter starting working with the Avengers. 

While moonlighting as Spiderman.

Which they didn’t know about.

But he made it work. For a while, even that was fine. He got really good at avoiding close calls and slip-ups, made good progress on some of his hypotheses, and hung out with superheroes sometimes. It was nice, actually. He had plenty of food to bring home for him and Aunt May, a paycheck that was putting an albeit small dent in his loans, and people who were willing to be around him for reasons other than strict professionalism and shoving him in lockers.

Clint and Thor liked it when he baked things, so Peter started making an effort to throw something together once a week at least, and nobody ever complained when he packed home a bunch of leftover containers when he left. Miss Romanoff taught him some knife moves when she was bored, or they did their stretches together and Peter insisted he was that flexible because of ballet, and nothing else. She didn’t buy it, he knew, but she never pressed. Banner and Stark liked having him in the labs, of course, but for different reasons. Banner liked having a biologist around to bounce ideas off of, and Stark liked having someone he could teach stuff to and have prove him wrong about later. Steve, who absolutely refused to be called Captain, Mr. Rogers, Rogers, Mr. Steve, or anything else, didn’t really seem to like the idea of Peter being around, but he got the feeling it was because he was worried about the fragility of regular people, or something, and not because he didn’t like Peter. Which was honestly ridiculous, seeing as they let Clint around, and he was the poster child for human durability. Also because Peter could stop a bus with his bare hands. Rhodey and Pepper were nice, too, even if he didn’t see them often. Pepper liked him, at least, which made Peter feel both extremely honored and immeasurably powerful, so that was neat. Rhodey he didn’t know well enough to say.

Barnes was weird. He laughed at nothing or talked really quietly to himself, sometimes, but seemed to be fine with Peter. Sam (who, like Steve, refused to be called anything but Sam) said he was sort of split between himself and the Winter Soldier, and that they traded off sometimes. The Winter Soldier wasn’t around much, but he liked to watch Peter make things, when he was, and didn’t seem to mind when Peter talked at him. Cool guy. Ba-dum tss.

But yeah. Long story short, the Avengers were all actually pretty nice to him, which sometimes made Peter feel a little like weeping in a very damaged kind of way, but he kept that very neatly under wraps in a part of his brain he liked to ignore at all times. 

Aunt May was just delighted he was making friends. 

So when he went into work and got shot at, he was understandably a little caught off guard. 

Nothing was different, at first. His senses were buzzing a little in the back of his head, but he figured that meant anything from “going to knock over a beaker” to “I’ve just decided the texture of this shirt is terrible,” so he mostly ignored it and went about his morning. 

“Hi, Clint,” he said to the vaguely-humanoid lump on the sofa.

“Hi, Peter,” Miss Natasha replied, curled up on the lump with a StarkPad in her hands. 

“Umfgh,” the lump grunted.

“Anyone want eggs? Because I feel better robbing your fridge when someone else shares it with me.”

“You know Tony doesn’t care. We’d all rather you eat than not.”

“Still, though. I feel bad.”

He heard the clink of ceramic and looked over to see the Winter Soldier sitting quietly at the breakfast bar, plate in front of him. At least Peter was pretty sure it was the Soldier. Barnes usually didn’t stare like that. 

“Oh, cool. Thanks.”

Breakfast eggs were good, if extremely overcooked because Peter wasn’t very good at it, and left him pleasantly full enough to head down to the labs where Banner was tinkering and Stark was passed out on a table. 

“Hi guys.”

“Hi, Peter.”

He worked. Did some math. Sloshed around some acid. Helped stop Stark from trying to drink a fourteenth cup of coffee. All the while, his spider sense got antsier, pun intended. Eventually, it got loud enough for Peter to start listening to it, and he put away the acid in favor of safer, more theoretical math, to no avail. Even tried spilling stuff on his shirt so he could get a new one, and still nothing helped. It left him kind of twitchy, absently picking at the sleeves of his coat and gnawing on his lips, tapping his foot against the floor as fast as he could move it, and that was kind of fast. Banner snuck away his coffee, and Stark tried littering granola bars in his way in an attempt to wind him down. He appreciated it, but it didn’t help much.

“You alright, kid?”

“Huh?”

“You’re kinda spazzy.”

“We mean, you seem anxious. Is something bothering you?”

“Oh, uhh,” what excuse would get them to let him be without getting more worried think think think think “I just am, I guess? I got a bad feeling, or something.” 

Oh he was so unsuspicious.

“Step out for a bit, then. Get some fresh air, maybe it’ll help.” Banner smiled. “It helps me, sometimes.”

Stark drummed his fingers on the table. “Yeah. Listen to the green giant, here.”

“Yeah, okay. I’ll be back later, I guess? Sorry.”

“No worries,” Banner said, at the same time Stark said “Have fun.”

Peter ran as soon as he hit the hallway. The tingle in his bones was getting loud, making him start sweating and his heart start hammering against his chest, pumping adrenaline through him on instinct. This was _real_ spidey-sense now, the kind that came before bank robberies and armies of sewer lizards. If he could just outside, he had his suit on under his clothes, and then he could figure out what the problem was. Maybe he could still stop it. 

He got as far as the lobby before everything went wrong, which, all things considered, was further than he got in his plans usually. The lights flickered up above them, and his senses went absolutely haywire, raising goosebumps on his skin and rocketing his pulse up so fast the corners of his vision went spotty. A few people glanced up at the lights as they wavered, and the secretary got as far as a nervous frown before six men in black-- or women, you know, but Peter wasn’t really paying that close of attention--stormed the doors, guns up and pointed in every direction. Many, many thoughts went through his head at once. Why wasn’t JARVIS activating defenses? Why weren’t the Avengers down here by now? Why didn’t they trip the cameras? Why did people keep attacking the singular, most fortified building in New York? What was with evildoers and black outfits? Come on, where’s the originality? Also, how was he going to get into the spider suit and take out these bozos before they shot someone, without being 100% very very caught by everyone?

Why was his life like this?

“Where are your Avengers now?” One of them shouted, and they all opened fire.

There were eleven noncombatants stuck in here. The waiting and meeting rooms had panic locks on them for this exact reason, and a good number of civilians fled there when the gunners walked in. Peter just had to keep eleven people alive. Against six guys with guns. Really, really big guns. Without being Spiderman. Easy, peasy.

He threw a table.

“Everybody get down!” he screamed, and grabbed a shooter around the middle, slamming them to the ground and stomping hard on their face when he got back up, tearing the gun from their hands and returning fire. Not that he actually shot _at_ any of them, but kind of spat bullets in their general direction to get their attention. And now there were five people pointing guns at him. Joy. 

“There are no such thing as heroes!” a shooter bellowed, and Peter rolled his eyes, popping the magazine out of the rifle.

He hurled it across the room and heard it make contact with someone a moment later, throwing himself to the ground behind a sofa and pulling his phone out of his pocket. He threw that, too, and tried not to lose his mind over the many many bullets peppering the furniture around him. He feinted left before vaulting overtop the couch and going for the nearest gunner at a dead sprint, clotheslining them under the chin and using the momentum to sling them into another with a perfectly reasonable and human amount of strength. One baddie to his left went down with a back full of lead, riddled by friendly fire, and Peter tried very very hard not to get distracted by the sight of a dead body three feet from his face. Cool. Cool cool cool cool cool. Great stuff. Five of the hostages were very still on the floor, neat clothes going red. He hoped they were just hit, and not dead. He needed them not to be dead.

Unfortunately, his split second of losing his focus had one of the shooters aiming square at him, and he had exactly enough time to think a lot of swears before he took a shotgun blast to the chest. 

“Peter!” someone screamed.

Things went very, very fast, after that. Six shooters went down in seconds. He heard the snap of a bowstring, the bass-filled crack of a repulsor, and the heavy clatter of guns all one after the other, the air ringing from the force of Steve’s shield and Thor’s hammer knocking into things. These guys were supers. Had to be, in order to last that long. Peter got up and clubbed someone with a lamp as Miss Natasha knocked them into range, diving to the floor and grabbing a knife from her boot to sling at another’s knees. 

“Stay down, малютка!” she snapped, and made for another shooter, guns up and firing. She joined the Winter Soldier and leapt up on the baddie’s shoulders long enough to choke them with her thighs, at which point the Soldier punched _through_ them and swung her off, pitching her like a javelin at the next enemy. 

He tried to stand again, but Stark was faster, dropping down in front of him with enough velocity to shatter the marble floors, leveling an unrelenting blast at anything that tried to come close. 

And then there was quiet. Steve was the first to speak.

“Natasha, Clint, get anyone who’s wounded and do what you can. Bucky, Thor, stay on these guys, make sure none of them go anywhere. Sam, Tony--”

“Kid?”

Peter looked up from where he was currently going into shock on the floor to Stark, who also seemed to be going into shock, stumbling out of the armor so fast he was nearly falling from it, slumping to his knees and grabbing the front of Peter’s shirt so hard his hands shook. Which was weird, because if he didn’t know any better, Stark was about to rip open his shirt, which meant he would see the spider suit, which was bad and oh my god that’s exactly what he was doing. 

“I’m okay,” Peter shrieked, and batted his hands away, scrambling back on his butt across the floor. “Everything’s fine! Super good!”

“Shotgun,” Stark choked, and grabbed for him again.

“Please don’t! I’m okay! I’m good! No touching necessary!”

He slapped his hand against his chest a few times for emphasis, and only winced a little at the bruising below. Thank god for Daredevil. He was right, Peter’s suit sucked, getting a bulletproof vest was a really good idea, thanks for letting him have one of his it kind of just saved his life and if he wasn’t thirty Peter could kiss him for it. 

“See? All good. No examinations necessary.”

“There’s _bullet holes_ \--”

“No there’s not! That’s just, uh. From some glass?”

Sam said something mildly frantic from across the room, and a moment later, there was a very big metal arm wrapped around Peter’s middle, and the shirt was unceremoniously ripped in two.

And there was the suit.

Yikes.


	2. tony is a wreck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> HEY tony has a panic attack/some major dissociation stuff in here so take care of yourselves yeah??

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for bein patient w me all, i rly appreciate it <33
> 
> still not sure where im really goin w this whole shebang so chapters r givin me a lil bit of difficulty w out a direction to put em in but hopefully ill figure it out n these can come a lil faster
> 
> lets hope lmao
> 
> also: i Love rhodey and this is ABSOLUTELY a Love Rhodey zone

Tony had some bad habits. Some. A few. Most. Yeah, most of his habits were kind of bad. And he knew that! He was a genius, so he was perfectly self-aware of the fact that he made a lot of poor decisions regarding his actions. And feelings. And everything else.

“J, what’s my ballistic strength at, now?”

“The material is capable of stopping most firearms beyond twenty-five feet. If I may--”

“No, you may not. Increase the carbon layer by two millimeters, and run the numbers, again.”

“Of course, sir.”

He was worried a perfectly natural amount, really. Peter being Spider-Man meant he was getting shot at a lot, so he needed a better suit to protect him from it. Tony was spending a perfectly healthy amount of time designing said suit, and it had nothing to do with the recurring nightmares of shotguns blowing a hole through the kid’s chest while he watched, none at all. He slept, sometimes. Even ate. He was perfectly fucking healthy, thanks JARVIS, no concern necessary. 

Tony tapped along the table. Peter was a smart kid. He wore kevlar, even though he said it was too clunky to move around in. Something something that red horny guy in Hell’s Kitchen, something something healing factor, something Bruce said he’s fine. No harm, no foul. But the kevlar was wasted, now, so the next logical step was building a better, more mobile material for the spider costume to protect him from getting shot at in the future, right? This was a perfectly natural string of events and actions that Tony was taking. Wasn’t excessive at all, no matter what JARVIS had to say about it, because JARVIS was grounded for being a smartass and therefore had all of his ideas immediately vetoed by DUM-E, who couldn’t stop Tony if she tried. Which she did. But she was Tony’s very first dumb robot, so what did she know? 

“J, where’s my stats?”

“Apologies, sir. You seemed lost in thought. I felt it best to let you be.”

“You felt wrong. Stats?”

“Most firearms are rendered inert beyond nineteen feet, sir.”

“Most?”

“Armor-piercing rounds are still viable up to thirty feet, and explosive damage is--”

“Not good enough. Another three millimeters.”

“Adding any more width to the carbon layer will cause an exponential loss of movement.”

Fuck. Fuck-fuckity fuck fuck shit god damn it son of a bitch. He tapped both hands on the table. 

“Tighten the fibers, and run it again.”

“Yes, sir.”

He needed to figure this out. He needed to have figured out he was working with Spider-Man, actually, but he’d already done a spectacular job of dropping the fucking ball there, so his primary concern, now, was figuring out how to keep said spider-intern alive. Tony was there when Bruce let him out of the med bay in one of Natasha’s tiny shirts (he was small, too small, painfully small), he saw the bruises on his arms, saw the line of scar tissue over his bicep, watched the tired limp in his step he didn’t bother to hide once he didn’t have to, and decided right then and there that making a better suit was priority one. He couldn’t get the image of the limp out of his head, the way it contrasted so horribly with Peter’s smile. He’d broken his fibia, Bruce said, at least a few weeks ago judging by how it was healing, and Peter told them it had been the night before when he took a bat to the shin outside a shitty bar. Tony made a joke about baseball and politely excused himself to have a very small, very reasonable breakdown in the lab. He hadn’t come out since. 

“Sir, Col. Rhodes is here to see you.”

Rhodey? Rhodey didn’t need to be here. Rhodey was working, and his work was pretty damn important, so he was being kind of irresponsible in coming down to the Tower when everything was fine and he didn’t need to be there at all whatsoever. Shame on him.

“Tell him I’m busy. And give me my stats, J. Now.”

“I’m afraid he’s quite adamant.”

“Stats.”

“Perhaps it is for the best if--”

“Stats stats stats stats stats st--”

“I seem to be malfunctioning.”

“--stats stats stats stawait. What did you just say? JARVIS, do not start with me right now, I swear to Pepper.”

“Strange. Door locks are being overridden. Performing emergency maintenance.”

“God _damn_ it don’t let him in! Security level six! Detain target! _JARVIS_!”

Oh, he was so grounded. Rhodey had important things to do, and Tony didn’t need him here, he didn’t need help, he didn’t need anyone because he wasn’t worth the _time_ and everyone had more important things to do than take care of a blubbering manchild throwing a piss fit over nothing. Honestly, he should just put on the armor and haul Rhodey out, himself, move some plaster in front of the door so he could get some work done, for once, and stop being a nuisance. Something smelled very faintly of burning flesh and he was 63% sure it was his arm, but he was too furious to care. What did JARVIS think he was doing, anyway? Overriding protocols like that, making issues for other people? Unbelievable. Some of them had lives outside of avenging, JARVIS, and that was very inconsiderate and rude of him to call them away for Tony’s sake. Which he definitely had, because Rhodey knew better than to just drop in on Tony while he was working, because he very much wanted to be left the hell alone and Rhodey knew that, so he shouldn’t have shown at all, bad Rhodey. Tony didn’t want him there. He wanted to be left to do his work. He wanted the whole world to fuck right off because his life was cruel and terrible and he hated everything, forever.

“Hi, Tony.”

Truly there was nothing more beautiful than being alive thank you god amen.

“Hey, sugar-bear. What brings a girl like you to a place like this?”

“The smell of your arm burning.”

He looked down. Yeah, that was definitely his arm getting too close to the sautering iron, and those were definitely going to be blisters in about a minute. Whoops. 

“How about that.”

“Tony…”

Was there anything more beautiful? Could a choir of angels make a single name sound more perfect than when Rhodey said his? Was there any force of good on this earth more radiant than the crease between his eyebrows? Could a single man be so perfect as to move mere mortals to tears? 

“Last I checked.”

“What happened to you?”

“Nothing happened to me. I’m fine.”

Rhodey came over to where Tony sat and took his arm in his hands, and the world exploded in technicolor. Simultaneously, however, he started to notice all the trash and broken circuits piled around the room, and a few fist-shaped holes in the wall that hadn’t been there before. Explained why his knuckles were purple. He’d been wondering about that.

“DUM-E, get me some water.”

She complied, for once, and Rhodey poured it over the burn, letting it run onto the floor and gurgle its way down the half-clogged drain. There might have been some metal shavings in it. Some. A few. A lot. 

“Thank you, nurse Florence. I’m feeling much better, now.”

He couldn’t actually feel his arm much beyond a kind of distant twinge, but that was fine. Rhodey was here, so everything was fine. 

“Come on, Tones. Talk to me. When’s the last time you slept?”

“I am talking to you. And I slept at night.”

“Which night?”

“The one where I slept.”

“You’ve been down here for a week.”

“And I slept at night.”

“Tony.”

“Yes, dear?”

He sighed, and the creases in his face made Tony feel a little like all his organs were trying to self-destruct, because Rhodey didn’t deserve this. Didn’t deserve having to deal with him and all his issues, to take time out of his day to save him from himself. But then Rhodey cupped his face in his hands, and Tony decided being selfish was, by far, the best idea he’d ever had. Rhodey’s palms were calloused below the joints of his fingers, along the meat of his thumb, at the pads of his fingertips, and they were probably the kindest things the universe had ever created, right next to Pepper’s smile and the curls in Bruce’s hair. His hands were all hard work and safety. Tony leaned into them and closed his eyes, and it felt like breathing before the reactor. Rhodey was perfect. Rhodey’s hands, Rhodey’s face, Rhodey Rhodey Rhodey Rhodey Rhodey.

“You with me, now?”

“Maybe. Kind of. I don’t know.”

No use lying to Rhodey. He could read him like a book, which was kind of hot, infuriating, and heartwarming all at once.

“Know what day it is?”

“No.”

“When’s the last time you ate?”

“Somewhere between carbon lining and bulletproof plastic lenses, I think.”

“Approximately fourteen hours ago, sir.”

“Oh, yeah. Then. Thanks, J, you’re still grounded.”

Rhodey made a face that meant he was definitely getting marched up to the kitchen in a few minutes, but Tony didn’t really mind. Not when it was Rhodey. 

“You feel anything?”

“I feel you.”

Warm and safe and good and perfect and and and

“Yeah, I was more talking about the arm.”

“In that case, not really.”

“Okay, okay, definitely getting that checked out. You’re building suits again, aren’t you? How many have you built since you went in here?”

“Three.”

“Th-- You-- _Three_? Jesus, Tones.”

“They’re barely even prototypes. Hardly count.”

“This is about that intern, isn’t it? Peter?”

“He got shot.”

“I heard. He okay?”

“Bruce said so.”

“Good. You’re building him something new, then?”

“Yup,” he popped the ‘p’ between his lips, and the motion made one of them crack and leak iron onto his tongue. Rhodey gently wiped the blood off his mouth with the pad of his thumb, and it felt a lot like being frenched by an angel. 

“Tony, you gotta get out of here.”

“Can’t. Not done yet.”

“Peter said he’d been doing this for years before he met you, didn’t he? He’ll be okay.”

Three years. Spider-Man had appeared three years ago, which meant Peter was fifteen years old when people started trying to kill him. He could have died, and Tony wouldn’t even have known about it. He might have just stopped showing up to work, one day, and they might never have even found his body. What if he’d just gotten dumped in a ditch somewhere? Taken by HYDRA? Strapped down and cut open like a dead frog in biology, with no one to know where he might have gone? His scars said he’d gotten hurt a lot, a long time before he was in the Tower, with medical supplies to steal and clean bathrooms to treat things in, and the thought of him alone and shivering, infection-sick and barely out of middle school was enough to make Tony’s stomach turn. He only fit in Natasha’s clothes and he snuck home more leftovers than he thought anyone noticed, and he was still so small, so fucking small, and if SHIELD had put out a kill order on him, the Avengers might not have even hesitated to take him down. When the shotgun hit him, it _threw_ him back, and if he wasn’t wearing that vest, it would have blown a hole straight through him, leaving him to choke on blood and nothing through his mangled lungs and all anyone could have done was _watch_. 

“Tony? Tony! Hey, hey, hey, come back to me. Breathe, come on. Come back.”

Oh, Rhodey. Rhodey was here, wasn’t he? And Tony was on the floor. Weird. Didn’t remember getting on the floor. Also didn’t remember when he started hyperventilating, but that was definitely happening, because he very very much couldn’t breathe past the hunk of metal humming in his chest.

“Rhodey,” he gasped, and it felt a lot like how it did when he was begging a helicopter to land in Afghanistan.

“I’m right here,” he replied, and pressed one of Tony’s hands to his chest, right over his heart. “Right here.”

Tony did his best to blink away the blackness at the corners of his vision, and Rhodey waited for him, pulse steady in his chest and face concerned, but not pitying. Never pitying. Part of what made him so perfect.

“Great, because that was awkward, am I right?”

“Cut the shit.” He squeezed Tony’s hand. “You good?”

“Getting there. I-- you help.”

“Glad to hear it.” He leaned forward, one of his palms still on Tony’s cheek, and brushed their mouths together. It stung where his lip had cracked, and Rhodey’s were salvation soft against his own. Like he’d flipped a switch, the world stopped spinning, the air regained its oxygen, and the warmth crept back up his limbs, clearing the cotton from his ears as Rhodey’s perfect hands wiped the tears-- when did those get there-- from his cheeks and pulled him into his shoulder. He smelled like cheap shampoo and Pepper’s perfume. Like home.

“Actually, I’m still terrible. You should do that again, you know, just to be sure.”

Rhodey snorted, and the sound vibrated through every molecule in Tony’s body.

“Uh-huh. Let’s get you something to eat before you pass out on me, for real.”

He didn’t try making Tony stand, for which he was grateful, because his legs felt kind of numb and also like wet paper, and Rhodey was warm. Instead, he hooked his hands under his thighs and lifted him, letting Tony bury his face in his chest and wrap his arms around his neck like it would keep him from floating away, and maybe it would. He was pretty sure this is what heaven felt like.

“You smell. So bad.”

“That water bottle was the closest thing I’ve had to a shower in a while, I’ll be honest.”

“Ugh. After I make sure you eat, I’m gonna throw you in a bathtub full of bleach and burn your nasty clothes.”

“You should join me. I hear bleach really helps you exfoliate.”

“Eat some vegetables and I might consider it.”

Tony tucked his face back into the crook of his neck and let the suits wait until tomorrow. He had vegetables to eat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im not too happy w this chapter but What Can Ya Do
> 
> you guys hav been so sweet !!! if theres anythin you have to suggest plotwise or critique wise please do i love hearin what you think n what you do/dont like to see, it helps me grow a lot!!! yr all real kind to me n i love ya


	3. the winter soldier punches a teen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> CONSIDER THIS A SNEAKY DOUBLE UPDATE IN REPAYMENT FOR ANOTHER 2 WEEK WAIT LMAO
> 
> edit: i changed some things in here to make the soldier seem a little more,, Not Right so if it reads a little odd thats intentional!! that being said though if somethigns hard to understand or just Too Wack let me know bc ive never tried writing a character like this before
> 
> and no worries if its hard to read hes gonna get better and the writings gonna change as he goes!!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ive never ? written bucky before but uhhhhhhhhh here he is
> 
> technically not bucky bc i like the idea of him sort of . never being bucky after Everything and making a new identity for himself w the whole winter soldier/prewar thing still trying to make sense in his head
> 
> that being said hes writings probably gonna be real weird so if youve got thoughts on it or comments about readability pls do share

“So, anyway, I’m sitting in lecture, minding my business, and the girl behind me puts her feet _on the back of my chair_. Like, three inches from my face! Who does that?”

Spider-man-- Parker-- Peter-- the small one-- ducked his fist and drove the heel of his hand into the Soldier’s chin, hard. He was not great at fighting, but he was strong. Stronger than most.

“Hm,” the Soldier agreed.

“I mean, I get it, you know? The seats are super uncomfortable, your knees get stiff, I get that. But, come on. Better ways to stretch than putting feet in my face.”

The Soldier threw a heavy right hook, and Peter (Peter?) dipped out of the way with all the effort of breathing. 

He was good to fight against. Did not treat the Soldier like it was on the edge of breaking down. Did not want it to pull its punches, and did not get grossly tender when the Soldier does anyway. He was smarter than he got credit for, and is very very good at dodging. Safe opponent, but still challenging. Good. Good? The Soldier did not know, not completely, because Barnes was not answering. Barnes had not answered since Peter(?)-is Spider-Man-is-Peter-who-got-shot happened, holed up instead in dusty memories of a very small, very skinny Steve (the Soldier called him Steve and not the target, Barnes, Barnes did you notice) who wheezed instead of breathing and shook at night and was always running a fever. Peter made Barnes nervous, nostalgic, and sad. He made the Soldier more comfortable than it was usually, which was new and kind, and it liked that very much. It would have been extraordinarily unhappy if something had happened to Peter during the shooting, and would have done a lot of things that would probably make the other Avengers very disappointed. It was good that Daredevil helped, even if his name was stupid, and his costume was tacky. 

“Hey, do you think Miss Natasha would let me try throwing Clint as a battle tactic? Because I think I can definitely throw Clint with moderate to decent accuracy.”

“Depends.”

“You’re right. I have to ask her when she’s mad at him.”

“Smart.”

The Soldier jerked its knee up into Peter’s gut, who coughed out a laugh, and ignored the feeling of a crossbow being pointed at its head from the air vent up above it. The spies still did not trust the Soldier, trusted it less with Peter’s safety. Good. It was not trustworthy. Barnes worried about HYDRA conditioning breaking through, and he was right to; though the Soldier tried, tried hard, sometimes things slipped between the cracks. Like the seven knives on its person.

Peter, on the other hand, was less smart. Made poor tactical decisions. He kept up with Stark (sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry) and Banner, and he could think his way out of anything, but he wasn’t smart, sometimes, not about everything. He trusted the Soldier, for one. Turned his back on it when they were in a room together, let it in his personal space, never checked its hands for weapons when he saw it approaching. Terrible, bad, incorrect action. Nobody should let the Soldier do any of these things. Steve did, but that was because Steve was also not smart. Peter really should have been more clever. But Peter wasn’t smart about people. He trusted very easily, let them touch and give things and watch without caring that they did, and it left him soft and vulnerable to them, easy to strike at when he wasn’t paying attention, and he never paid attention once he trusted them. Good thing the Soldier did not do any of that, and therefore could protect Peter with all of its knives. 

Peter was not smart, too, because he never worried about the Avengers hurting him, not even the Soldier, and he never looked afraid when he looked at them. It was stupid, and wrong, and bad, and a terrible programming error in his part. Get him killed, maybe. But it was so genuine and pure, kind like the rest of him, that it made the Soldier feel very warm under its sternum in a way that turned the ice in its bones a little less brittle. Which was also stupid, and bad, and a terrible programming error, but not Peter’s fault. 

“Hi, Thor!” Peter said, and turned his attention to the gym doorway faster than the Soldier could stop the momentum of its swing. Peter didn’t dodge as far as he should have, didn’t arc all the way out of his movement path, and all the Soldier could do was watch, guilt-soaked, as it clipped a very unaware Peter across the jaw. 

To the Soldier's credit, it swooped out an arm and hooked him around the middle before the force could knock him to the ground, and Peter just went with it, easy and boneless and for a moment, the Soldier wondered if it had done something unforgivable.

“Oh, nice one. I’m good!” Peter chirped, and flashed two thumbs up at the same time Barton planted an arrow in the millimeter space between the Soldier’s toes. 

The Soldier deserved that. Because it was bad. Terrible. Awful. Disciplinary action required.

“Woah, what? Is that an arrow? Clint, did you just try to shoot him?”

Barton dropped from the ceiling. The Soldier grabbed Peter by the chin and forced his eyes wide. Right, then left. No blown pupils. No concussion. Still unacceptable, but not deserving of solitary. Right, Barnes. Barnes. Barnes, right. Right.

“Yeah, because he just fucking clocked you, Peter!”

“In training. Clint, dude, calm down.”

“He could have killed you!”

“He hit me in the face.”

“With his metal arm! I’ve seen him dismember people with his metal arm!”

Barton was smart for not trusting the Soldier, but stupid to think it would ever use that kind of strength on Peter. The Soldier might be terrible, terrible enough to hit Peter when he didn’t know they were still in combat, but it would never do so with enough force to kill. It hoped. Please. Barnes please do not make it go to solitary. 

“I’ve had people throw cars at me. A guy once hit me across the head with a steel beam. That one… okay, that one kind of messed me up pretty good, but this is nowhere near that.”

“Still, he could have-- wait, hang on, a guy did _what_?”

Yes, please repeat, a guy did what. Was that guy dead. Peter, was that guy dead because if he wasn’t he was going to be. 

“You are all overreacting. The boy is clearly fine! Look at him.”

Peter kept glaring at Barton over the Soldier’s shoulder, face squished up where its fingers were still holding him in place. He looked like an angry chipmunk. 

The Soldier let him go, stepped back. Cut its toe on the arrow, but it deserved that, so it did not complain.

“Thank you, Thor,” Peter said.

“See? Look at that! All extremities intact and everything.” He slapped Peter on the back, hard, and Peter didn’t even bow with the force. Still made the Soldier want to reach for one of its knives. 

“It’s fine, Mr. Barnes. I’m good.”

“...Sorry.”

“Accepted, man. No worries.”

No worries. As if the Soldier would ever stop worrying. It had done something wrong. It had made a mistake. Ruined it. Ruined everything, like always. 

_Hang on, are you losing it because you hit the kid?_

Yes. Because the Soldier was terrible and bad, it hit him when he wasn’t paying attention. Betrayed his kind trust. Like the people it had promised to kill to protect him from.

_Slow down, drama queen. I was out for a while, but I know you’re on the training floor right now, and newsflash: that shit happens. You know how many times I’ve cold-cocked Steve out there?_

Bad terrible awful bad wrong failed bad bad bad.

_Shut the fuck up. Look-- look at this._

Barnes pulled up a memory of him and Steve, circling each other on the mat, in the woods, in a bar, in a bunker, in a trench, and catching him solid in the cheek. Dozens of them, identical memories of the same swing that always caught them both off guard. Terrible pattern analysis. Bad data.

_Says the guy who just did the same thing._

Sorry. Sorry. Sorry sorry bad terrible bad.

_I’m not-- You’re a fuckin’ menace, you know that? Try putting yourself in the fridge again, and I’m eating raisins for a week._

Gross.

_Yeah? Knock off the self-deprecation shit. Makes me tired._

Sorry.

_Whatever._

Also hello Barnes why were you looking at small Steve for so long why weren’t you listening how long are you staying are you going to take over do you think Peter hates us now please don’t eat raisins they taste like sugar and dirt.

_Shut the hell up, shut your damn mouth, stop talking, shut the fuck up, no, and don’t test me._

Rude.

_Says the assassin carrying seven knives. Hey, is my foot bleeding? Did Clint fuck up my foot? That son of a bitch, I’m putting grease on his archery gloves. Go clean that up._

And then solitary. Right. Because the Soldier broke one of the rules. Right. 

_No, for the love of Sara Moira Rogers, God rest her soul, do not go under the damn bed again, or I’m stealing the wheel and walking around unarmed._

You would not.

_Wanna test that theory?_

...The Soldier would not go under the bed. 

“Uh, Mr. Barnes? Are you alright?”

The world came rushing back to the Soldier's awareness and it realized it had just been standing very still on the mat for the last few seconds, probably staring at nothing. Oops. 

“I’m fine,” Barnes tried to say, at the same time the Soldier responded with an automatic “yes,” and the words that actually left their mouth was “I’m yes.”

“O-kay,” Barton said, and Thor gave him a strained smile. Peter didn’t look at it funny. He just tipped his head and nodded.

“Cool.” He pointed at the Soldier’s bleeding foot. “You should get that.”

“Yes,” it agreed, and promptly left the room, trailing blood as it went. In its head, it felt Barnes sighing, shifting in their too-small skull, curling up with a fatigue the Soldier felt like its own, because it half-was, and tucking himself back into the sepia washed expanse of the memories Before. Barnes. Barnes are you leaving again. When are you coming back. Barnes please don’t go.

_I don’t know, okay? I’m not-- fuckin’ fine. I’ll stay. I won’t go back in there or anything, so long as you don’t bother me with dumb shit. Just let me sleep._

Okay.

Barnes was always tired. Some days less so than others, but he was always tired. They were both always tired. He slept less and less the longer he and the Soldier stayed away from cryo, and he could stay awake and in charge for full days, now, even two or three, but he still had a kind of bone deep weariness to him that he couldn’t shake, and when he slept, the Soldier did his best. It was hard when the Soldier didn’t know what to do. It never knew what to do. Neither did Barnes, or so he said, but he made the other Avengers laugh instead of giving him wary looks and frowning, so he was clearly better equipped than the other occupant of the house. They all liked Barnes better, from the way Stark (sorry sorry) laughed at his jokes to the way Steve got his Bucky-smile-- even though neither of them were Bucky, not anymore, but he didn’t know that-- everyone was more at ease when the Soldier wasn’t around. It would be good when Barnes stopped being so tired, when he could get back to being himself all the time. The Soldier wondered what would happen to it when it did not have to _be_ anymore.

_The kid._

Clarify. 

Also, you are asleep.

_Kid likes you better. I make him antsy. And I can’t sleep when you’re having such a loud-ass pity party up there._

Peter… liked the Soldier better. Incorrect. Incorrect? Analyzing behavioral data. Lessened bodily tension, more declarative statements, did not avoid eye contact, did not avoid physical contact, increased use of domestic conversation topics. Conclusion: Peter _did_ like the Soldier better. Which was awful, and extremely not smart, because the Soldier was the absolute worst person to like better, and that was a terrible thing to learn so why was its face doing that and why did it feel like it just proved Sam wrong but times one-thousand? And why was it suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of responsibility? Analyzing. The Soldier was trusted, trusted more than Barnes, and everyone trusted Barnes more than it, which meant that this trust was special. It had to protect this, protect Peter, make sure that no matter what happened, he would be safe, and okay, and would know how much the Soldier appreciated his trust because he was the first person to ever give that to it and nobody ever trusted it before it was going to have a heart attack what if it made a mistake. 

Barnes did the mental equivalent of banging the wall with his fist to shut him up, and the Soldier stopped wrapping its toe long enough to bang back. Like Barton said, it was trying to have a breakdown, here. Let it live. Barnes slammed on the wall again, harder this time, and forced up a memory of eating a boiled shoe. The Soldier gagged, and shot back a memory of its own of HYDRA-supplied, asset-specific MRE’s.

_Shut the hell up, you stupid bastard._

No. 

_Fucker._

Liability.

_Bitch._

Inferior strategist.

_Raisin-hater._

Raisin-eater.

From beyond the bathroom door, Peter laughed at something, and the world grew a little warmer.

The Soldier let Barnes sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> again im not too happy w any of the chapters ive done yet w this but im still tryna get back into the groove n i appreciate all the kind words <33


	4. mj enjoys a lego movie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> peter has rampant bi crushes on all his friends bc hes so full of love pass it on

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HHHGJJGJNFJ THAT WAS A LONGER WAIT THAN I INTENDED BUT PROBABLY IS GOING TO BE THE NORM FOR UPDATES ON THIS BAD BOY
> 
> IVE GOT A WHOLE LOT OF HOMEWORK ALL THE DAMN TIME SO I PRETTY MUCH GET LIKE. ONE DAY A WEEK ON THESE
> 
> THAT BEING SAID THIS MAY NOT BE THE BEST PIECE OF LITERATURE YOULL FIND OUT THERE, BUT IM TRYIN AND ABSOLUTELY WELCOME ANYONE POINTING OUT MISTAKES IF I FLUBBED IT ANYWHERE
> 
> BUT BIG CHAPTER!! AND PLOT................................................

All the drama aside, being out as Spider-Man to the Avengers was kind of great. He could work on spider stuff in the labs with real equipment, for one, and he was making leaps and bounds in improving the suit-- blew Stark’s _mind_ when he brought up using synthetic spider silk instead of kevlar fibers, which was one of the coolest moments of his life-- not to mention how much fun he was having tinkering with the webshooters now that he had the right tools to do it. He’d managed to slim them down by a few millimeters without damage to the capacity or durability, _and_ he got one pair painted red, so he was pretty much riding the best scientific high of his life. Stark liked making suggestions for his tech, though Peter got the feeling he didn’t do it so much for the suggestion as he did to hear Peter shut them down. Banner said he just liked hearing how people think.

Speaking of, the biologist was having a field day trying to figure out Peter’s genetics, and it was neat to learn some more about what exactly was going on in there, even if it meant he had to stick to the ceiling for a few hours, or fork over some blood, sometimes. He was fine with that. He got fruit snacks for it, and that was a fine exchange in his mind. 

Miss Natasha wasn’t afraid to knock him down on the training floor, anymore, and she had tripled the frequency of their knife lessons, dropping in some combat moves and Clint-demonstrated finishers that had since come super, super nicely in handy on patrol since, though some of the team turned kind of green when he told Miss Natasha about it, later. Which, to be fair, wasn’t an unusual response to patrol stories, but it was still kind of a bummer.

Even though Peter had been on national television a few times getting thrown around like a ragdoll before, the Avengers tended to be… protective, when it came to him, now that they knew. Steve wouldn’t spar with him out of fear of hurting him, even though he’d seen Steve go up against Clint, Miss Natasha, and Sam on more than one occasion, who were way less durable than he was. Stark wouldn’t even come near the training room if Peter was in it, and Banner tended to hover on the rare occasions he went down to watch. Both the scientists made JARVIS keep them updated on Peter’s wellbeing when he entered the tower, and if he was sporting anything more than a papercut, they hauled him down to medical faster than he could say ‘ouch’. It was heartwarming, sure, knowing someone actually cared, but it was also a little humiliating. He was a superhero! He’d taken care of himself for years before this, and he wasn’t about to turn into tissue paper now that his friends (Coworkers? Teammates? Did he count as a teammate if he hadn’t signed any Avenger paperwork? Was there Avenger paperwork? Paperwork made him nervous.) knew about it. 

Even MJ said they were overreacting. Then again, she said that about most people for most things.

“So, like, does Captain America hang out with you?”

Peter rolled over onto his stomach, where he was lying on Ned’s stomach, where Ned was lying on MJ’s bed. 

“Not really. Steve doesn’t hang around me much, anymore. He liked me better when I was just an intern, I think.”

MJ stuck her foot in Peter’s face, and he set her ankle down on his chest, idly fumbling with the top of her sock. She, unlike them, was trying to study. He felt a little bad about distracting her, but she’d only threatened to kick them out once, which meant she privately enjoyed the company. He was getting really good at understanding MJ-ese. And to think, it only took him eleven years.

“Oh. That sucks. Have you ever fought Thor?”

“Once or twice. He’s way bigger than me, and if I don’t have my webshooters, he kind of mops the floor with my face.”

“Awesome.”

“Poor floor.”

“Thanks, MJ. But yeah, it’s pretty neat.”

“What about the Hulk? Have you ever fought the Hulk?”

“No, Dr. Banner doesn’t like the training rooms, much. And I don’t think he or the others would let me. They barely let me spar with Mr. Barnes.”

Ned lifted his head, wide-eyed, to look at Peter.

“You fight with the Winter Soldier? Like, Bucky Barnes, the Winter Soldier?”

“Yeah, I mean, sometimes. He only ever spars with me when he’s the Soldier, though. I don’t think Barnes likes me, either. Barnes, Barnes, not. Not Mr. Barnes. Or… kind of Mr. Barnes. The Barnes he is when he’s not the Winter Soldier-Barnes.”

“ _Cool_.”

MJ closed her book and pushed back from her desk with a flourish, giving Ned a shove that was more meant for show before flopping over onto the bed with them. She occupied herself with braiding together Peter’s bangs, flinging a leg carelessly over one of Ned’s arms.

“You guys are dorks. Where’s the good gossip, Parker? Come on.”

“Good like what? I think if I say anything about Avenger stuff Miss Natasha’ll come kidnap me.”

“Like who’s got the weirdest habits? Who’s got dirty secrets? What is there about the Avengers that the public doesn’t know?”

“Your reporter’s coming out,” Ned informed her, and she stuck her tongue out at him. He retaliated in kind. 

“Uhh. Clint crawls around in the vents, sometimes? Thor… really likes my baking?”

“You’re awful at muckraking.”

“Hey! I can muckrake just fine.”

“Yeah, leave Peter’s inability to rake superhero muck alone.”

“You guys suck.”

“Aww, I love you too, buddy.”

MJ didn’t say the same, but she did tug on Peter’s bangs a little bit and flick his nose, and that was pretty much the same thing. He blushed.

“I… I love you guys, too.”

She leered at him.

“Oh, my God. You’re like a cherry grew a face.”

“Shut up! I’m trying to be emotionally open and affectionate!”

MJ pinched his cheeks between her fingers, wiggling his head back and forth.

“Widdle baby Peter is embawassed he woves his fwends.”

He buried his face in Ned’s shirt, who laughed, patting him on the head with his free hand despite the shit-eating grin Peter could _feel_ he was shooting at MJ. He knew it. There was a mutiny on his hands. A very warm, very soft mutiny. A mutiny that rattled his bones with the laughter beneath him and made his heart do weird acrobatics in his chest, in a very mature and adult kind of way, because he was a mature, adult, college-aged man. That kind of mutiny. 

Ned pat his hair again.

“Hey. Have you guys seen the new LEGO movie?” he asked.

“Aren’t those for kids?”

“Your face is for kids, MJ,” Peter shot back.

“Wow. I’m in shambles.”

“No, Pete’s got a point. They’re funny movies, man. Why do you hate fun?”

“I’m a witch and any time people have fun it drains away my power.”

“Explains why you liked Ms. Drudell’s history lectures so much.”

MJ shoved her foot against Ned’s jaw, and he slapped at her leg, whining. 

“Seriously, though. We should go to the movies. It’s been forever since we did that.”

“And LEGO movies are the answer?”

“You have a better idea? It’s pretty much the only thing showing other than horror flicks, and you know I spook easy.”

“... Fair enough.”

They eventually, after a few minutes of laying there and saying they were going to get up, piled into MJ’s old, rickety car with its broken AC and crank-windows, new and hybridized stereo standing out like patchwork above the gearshift. She let Peter practice driving shift in it, once or twice, teaching him how to get from zero to sixty in less than eight seconds without stalling the engine. He asked her how she knew that in the first place, and she said it was better if he had plausible deniability. 

Ned plugged in his phone and shook the frame with the nightmare mix of all their music mashed into a single playlist, bass rattling the windowpanes and making the upholstery bounce crumbs onto the floor, the volume made tolerable by the broken old sound-cancelling headphones MJ kept in the backseat for when they all rode together, though she insisted it was because she couldn’t be bothered to throw them away. Ned had drawn spiders on the sides and wrapped them in red and blue tape, which was probably the only thing keeping them together, but Peter didn’t mind. It was a pretty accurate metaphor for his life, and he appreciated the gesture. 

He liked car rides with Ned and MJ. It made him feel a little less like a freaky spider-person hiding half his life from the rest of the world, and more like just Peter, doing dumb college things with his friends the way things used to be. Granted, back when things were actually normal for him, none of them could drive, so the car rides had a lot more of Aunt May’s music involved, but the nostalgia was still there. Here, he was safe, warm, and loved, all himself and with nothing more than Tuesday’s biochem essay to worry about.

So the deadly criminal conspiracy kind of caught him off guard. 

“I thought it was cute.”

“It was tolerable, in a predictable, self-aware humor kind of way.”

“Told you you’d like it!”

“I said, and will say nothing of the sort.”

“MJ liked a LEGO movie, man! Peter, this is a scientific breakthrough!”

It didn’t get him _completely_ off guard, because it was hard to do that with super spider senses, but it certainly wasn’t something he’d necessarily been _prepared_ for. It took him longer than he’d like to admit to notice it.

“Peter?”

Gum on the wall. Smells like strawberries and tobacco. Forty-four degrees outside. Six street lamps in sixty foot radius, two with flickering bulbs, one out. Fusebox on the other side of the wall to MJ’s left. Frequency of humming suggests 32 kWh per square foot. Restaurant? Takeout. Air currents from that direction taste like steamed pork buns. Ned is using new shampoo, MJ applied nail polish sometime in the last forty-eight hours. Disruption to the left, small, fast-- a bat-- moth keeps hitting the light above the dumpster, which is full of old popcorn and expired ice cream. 

Ned put a hand on his arm, and the world snapped itself back into focus with enough force to make Peter feel a little nauseous. Kind of like being hit by a car. Nowhere near as bad, though. Getting hit by cars really sucked.

“Hey, dude. Are you okay? We can keep the music off on the way back if you need--”

He slapped his hands over Ned’s mouth, who said something about tasting like popcorn butter against his palm. He steadfastly decided to ignore the way that made his insides do some wiggly dance, and focused instead on the spider-sense that was currently trying to bash his skull against the nearest flat surface.

“Something’s wrong,” he hissed. Ned went pale. MJ grinned. 

“What kind of wrong?” she asked, and he shrugged.

“I don’t know yet? Stay here.”

He was, of course, totally ignored, and MJ crept along behind him, producing both her phone and what Peter was pretty sure was a switchblade from the bag they’d used to smuggle in snacks. Ned folded himself behind her, clinging to the back of her shirt and fumbling with the emergency webshooter on his wrist. At least Ned was wearing his. MJ kept asking for ones with tasers. 

He focused on his senses again. 

Cigarettes, still lit. At least thirty feet ahead, probably around the corner by more dumpsters. Taco place. Lots of rotting lettuce and some carne asada. Not as much as most, though. These guys weren’t super wasteful, so good on them. Rhythmic sound. Music? No. Talking? Talking. He needed to get closer.

“...this?”

“Oh, I’m sure.”

Two (two?) speakers, presumably male. Regular smoker. 

“I don’t know. I never heard of it.”

“It’s new to the market. Better than anything you’ve ever tried, I’ll guarantee you that.”

“Better how?”

“You’ll feel like a new man.”

“Yeah, I can get my cousin Joe’s laced weed and feel like a new man. Ain’t no dealing with freaky guys like you, neither. No offense. I’m passing.”

“It seems I’ve undersold our product.”

Our? More than one? Only two voices. Not enough debris crunching underfoot. Our referring to a partner, an organization? Our.

“Listen, guy. There’s a group of junkies down by the waterfront who’re more than happy to get into the real freaky shit. They drink sewage, or chemical waste, or whatever, I don’t know. But they’ll probably take your… miracle drug. Acid bath salts. But not me.”

“Allow me to rephrase.”

“You have to?”

“I’ll buy you another three packs.”

“...Preach to me, man.”

MJ pressed up against Peter’s arm, light enough not to startle him out of his senses too badly, but enough to get his attention.

“What’s happening? I can’t hear anything.”

He shushed her again, and she pinched him.

“When I say you’ll get a high, I mean you’ll be unstoppable. You’ll feel no pain, no worry; the stress of the world will vanish, and you will be left with the greatest sense of freedom you’ve ever known. You’ll be godlike, my friend.” 

“How strong of a high are we talking, here?”

“If heroin were a static shock, this would make lightning fall to its knees.”

“...Uh. Alright, Shakespeare. Funny way of putting ‘pretty fuckin’ good,’ but okay. You got me interested. How much you want for it?”

“Not a cent. I only ask you keep in touch. Like I said, it’s new to the market-- I need to know our users are doing well. You understand, don’t you?”

“So like, a guinea pig?”

“Well--”

“Man, come on.”

“To put it bluntly, yes.”

Rustling of fabric. Flick of a lighter. New cigarette.

“Listen. I get the feeling you’re serious, and you seem pretty legit, but. I ain’t doing any freaky experiments, you know? We got enough fucked-up weirdos out there, and this ass don’t look great in tights.”

Oh, hey. Peter was one of those weirdos. Nice.

“That’s a shame, then. I know when I’ve struck out. It was a pleasure doing business with you. I wish it had gone better.”

“Yeah, good luck with your, uh. Human experimentation, I guess. I won’t say nothing, I ain’t stupid. I know how this works.”

“I appreciate it.”

“Sure thing, man. Thanks for the smokes.”

The smoker stayed put. No changes in odor. The seller… footsteps. Footsteps, cloth, getting louder, getting louder, getting oh man definitely coming this way mission abort.

“We’re out!” Peter planted a hand on each of his friends’ backs and pushed, just a little beyond what accounted for normal human strength, and barreled them back to the movie theater dumpster, where it was at least a little brighter, if equally abandoned. He was pretty sure they’d be fine, but of course, fate absolutely hated Peter Parker, and so that was absolutely not going to happen. His next step came down on an unassuming can of Surge, which promptly shot out from under his shoe and slammed into the metal container full of trash, echoing with a force equivalent to that of Peter’s hand hitting himself in the forehead. 

The footsteps stopped. More fabric. Click. Click? What was click? Metal? Metal click? Oh, gun. GUN. 

“Get down! He hissed, and was halfway up the wall before MJ snatched the back of his shirt and yanked him back. He didn’t get a chance to ask her what she was doing before she reached up and flung her top over her head and directly into Ned’s chest, violently ruffling both his and Peter’s hair and mouthing the words ‘play along’ as she undid the clasp of her bra. Which was actually one of Peter’s, at some point, long before he’d given them all to her and switched to sports bras exclusively. 

“Are we trading clothes?” Ned asked, twisting MJ’s top in his hands. “Cause I don’t see how that’s gonna help us, here.”

She shot him a look that was a lot like the one villains gave Peter before enthusiastically trying to kill him, and spoke, voice pitched high and lilting, carrying it far enough to be heard.

“And you _promise_ not to tell anyone, right?” she crooned, sugar sweet and delicate in a way that made very real, visceral terror crawl into his spine. If the look of horror on Ned’s face was anything to go by, he wasn’t the only one. “Play. Along!” she growled, quieter, and Peter shared a very confused look with Ned before he replied.

“Uh… yes?”

Footsteps moving again. Closer, slower. More careful. Near enough now to hear the sound of fingers dragging over a pistol grip.

“MJ, this is dangerous, you and Ned need to hide, and I’ll--”

“Trust me, Peter.” 

He whined, and she spoke in the nightmare-voice again. It was like being skinned by a scalpel made of candy canes. Ned looked a little like he might be sick.

“Alright… but just look, okay? You’re gonna have to put a ring on this to get any further than that.”

The gunman came around the corner at the same time MJ slid one of the straps down her shoulders and promptly loosed a very loud, very fake, theatrical squeal and clapped her arms over her torso.

He was hiding one hand behind his hip, that was where the gun was, and if Peter could just get to it, he could-- wait. Losing tension, spider-sense going down, danger lessening. Danger lessening? Mr. Creepy moved his armed hand into his coat. Stretching leather. Holstering the gun.

“Oh, my God!” MJ wailed. “Get away, pervert!” She threw herself into Peter’s arms, and he instinctively tried to cover her with as much of himself as he could. Ned was behind them. If the guy pulled the gun again, they were less likely to be the first target. He had to keep them safe. “We’ll call the cops on you, freak!”

Their almost-attempted-murderer snorted and stepped away, raising both hands in surrender as he backed into the light of the theater entrance. No cologne. No shampoo. Cigarette smoke, but only secondhand. He smelled like disinfectant. Peter felt his heartbeat in his eyes.

“Ah, to be young,” he sighed, and disappeared.

Footsteps. Receding. No gun. No leather. Footsteps. Uneven on the left foot by a margin of a few milliseconds. Footsteps. Probably a bad knee. Footsteps. Maybe a bunion. Footsteps. Nothing. 

“We’re safe,” Peter mumbled, but made absolutely no move to let go of MJ. She wiggled free anyway, snatching both his and Ned’s arms as she bolted for the car and grinning like a maniac from the light in her eyes to the too-bright, feral shine of her teeth. That also made Peter’s insides do the funky chicken, but he was kind of thinking that was largely due to all the adrenaline reacting poorly with more slurpee than a human person should drink in one sitting.

The first thing she did when they all got in the car was lock the doors. The second was pulling out of the parking lot, and doing that zero-to-sixty acceleration thing she said they shouldn’t ask about. Third, she put her seatbelt on.

“Please never, never do that again,” Peter wheezed, because he was pretty sure he was having a little bit of a panic attack, because he’d put Ned and MJ in _danger_ ; they could have gotten _hurt_ , they could have _died_. 

“Yeah, uh, Michelle? Please never, never do that voice, like, ever again. It’s gonna haunt my nightmares.”

“Oh, absolutely no promises. Peter, I can hear you freaking out back there. Cut it out, we’re fine.”

“But you--”

“We aren’t that fragile, Parker. You were talking about how much you hate the Avengers babying you literal hours ago.”

“I can stop a car! You guys get hurt, you could die! He had a gun! He could have--”

“You wouldn’t let that happen.”

“You don’t _know_ that! What if I was too slow? Or what if--”

“You weren’t.”

“Next time, I might be! Oh, my God. I’m gonna be sick.”

“Not in my car, you’re not!”

Ned unbuckled his seat belt and pulled Peter into the middle seat before clicking him back in and folding him against his side. Good job on road safety, Ned. Next lesson is on dealing with potentially homicidal drug dealers with guns. God, he’d had a gun. He had a gun and things could have gone so much worse.

“Come on, man, breathe. We’re right here. Hey, I’m kinda with Pete on this one, MJ. That was really close. Also, do you want your shirt back, or…?”

“Give it to Peter.”

He obliged, and Peter didn’t even have the mind to be embarrassed about burying his face in the fabric, burrowing up against Ned’s chest and clinging to him. Grounding. Ned was here, his heartbeat was right under his cheek, he was breathing and alive and warm and soft and _safe_ , and everything smelled like a blend of his and MJ’s laundry detergent, and they were both fine. Everything was fine. Wasn’t it?

“Please don’t do that again,” he whimpered, and Ned patted his hair. MJ’s voice was softer than usual when she replied.

“You know we can’t promise that, webs. You’re our boy, and we’re gonna keep you safe same as you do for us, whether you like it or not.”

“We’re not going anywhere, buddy. Like, seriously. Can we not go anywhere? I really want to crash together tonight. Cause I think I’ll lose my shit, otherwise.”

“Same,” Peter mumbled, and MJ snorted.

“Yeah, sure, whatever. Mooches.” Her hands readjusted on the wheel, and the pleather stopped creaking with how hard she was holding it, and he realized she needed the comfort as much as they did. 

If only he knew what they were getting themselves into.

“Yo, do you think they’ll let me through the Dairy Queen drive through without a shirt on?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> winksj i love u
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> also peters trans bc i love him and this is my city so theres a taste of that in here yeehaw


	5. peter gets bullied by superheroes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i didnt hav anythin plotwise this week so this ones mostly filler n some character stuff sorry yall!! its extra long tho so if you like some domestic content(tm) this ones for you

Peter woke feeling safe, warm, and loved. He also woke being very, very late, which was the more pressing issue on his mind, but he still took a minute to appreciate the absolutely transcendent pocket of toasty blankets he’d found for himself between Ned’s soft side and the wall. 

“Peter!” Aunt May called, and he shot upright, finding her stood in the doorway, his shoes in hand. He should probably have felt a little more awkward about the fact that he was wearing nothing but MJ’s shirt and his underwear, but he wasn’t firing on quite enough cylinders for the realization to catch up yet.

“Gyuh-uh. I’m up. I’m up.”

“You were supposed to leave ten minutes ago!”

“I was?” he glanced at his clock. “Oh man, I was!”

“I’ve got breakfast in a tupperware for you, dear, get moving!”

“Thanks, Aunt May!”

He gave up his spot with no small amount of reluctance, wiggling out of Ned’s arms and very nearly caving and calling in sick when Ned made a sad little noise at the lack of something to cuddle. He was like an octopus, honestly. A warm, soft octopus. MJ growled when Peter clambered over her, too, and he took a second to fix the blanket where she’d kicked it off in the middle of the night, probably around the time she’d managed to turn completely upside down. Ned rolled over and wrapped his arms around her ankles for lack of a gangly teen to hold, and started snoring again almost immediately. 

Peter scrambled for the closest clothes he could find, forgoing a toothbrush in favor of swishing some mouthwash around and dunking his head in the sink before cramming his wallet in his pocket, grabbing his bag, and promptly falling down the stairs. Aunt May was pushing food in his hands by the time he was back upright, making a futile attempt to fix his hair and righting the collar of his (Ned’s) jacket. 

“You’re alright, dear? You kids shouldn’t stay up so late, really Peter, it’s not good for your health! I already called Dr. Banner and let him know you were on your way.”

“You’re a lifesaver, Aunt May.”

“Oh, don’t I know it.” She smacked a kiss to his forehead, and he pecked her cheek in return. “Now, get! Shoo! You’re late!”

“I’m getting!”

“Text me when you get there, you hear me? And don’t fall asleep on the bus, again!”

“I will! I mean, I won’t! I will and I won’t. Bye May!”

“Have a good day!”

He stumbled out the door and briefly thanked the universe for giving him crazy spider endurance as he sprinted down to the bus stop and launched himself through the closing doors, bumping into an older man and frantically apologizing as he berated Peter for bruising his fresh pears; he’d just bought them and they were going to go bad twice as fast, now, kids these days had no respect. 

It made for an exciting morning, at least. 

Ned and MJ hadn’t really meant to spend the night-- they were just supposed to study together and go home-- but then Ned had started talking about the ocean being freakier than deep space, and MJ got into a heated debate with him over the effects of acid rain and climate change on theoretical deep sea life, and Peter got really interested in speculating whether anything could survive in a vacuum, so really, it was Ned’s fault they all wound up packed into Peter’s tiny bunk bed on a school day. Hard to be mad at him when Peter was still swimming in his jacket, but he tried. A little. 

To be entirely honest with himself, he hadn’t slept well since the night at the movies. He knew Ned and MJ had picked up on it, and it was probably his fault they felt the need to keep spending their nights together, but the guilt of being an inconvenience was outweighed by the relief of getting a human amount of sleep every now and again. If his dreams weren’t some ugly permutation of what might have happened if things had gone wrong, they were an endless series of worst-case scenarios about whatever drug that guy was talking about getting into the streets, turning people into huge frogs, or making all babies evil, or something. He had a lot of dreams about the frog thing. It was making him paranoid, staying out later than he should on patrols and scouring the city for ghosts that weren’t there. So far, he hadn’t heard anything about people getting sick or growing any extra arms, so it seemed to be alright for the time being. He hoped. 

He hadn’t brought it up to the Avengers. Even if he told them, he didn’t have anything more substantial than a rumor to back it up, and he didn’t need to waste their time with it. That, and if he even suggested someone could have shot him and/or his friends, he was pretty sure they’d lock him in a room full of bubble wrap and go on a hunting spree for the guy, and Peter didn’t like being stuck in small spaces, so he wanted to avoid that as much as possible. He was probably overreacting, anyway, so it was fine. 

The bus dropped him off two minutes behind schedule, and he made a break for the tower.

-

Meanwhile, Barnes woke up with sweat dripping in his eyes, a knife in his hand, and a distinct lack of air in his lungs. It left him reeling for a second, the sensation of being back in his own skin and bones odd and alien like the too-soft sheets that tangled up his legs and the nightclothes that weren’t Depression-threadbare on his body. The Soldier was fidgeting and writhing in his skull, anxious and distressed as he dug himself deep into the space behind their eyes and hid in it, like a rodent in its hole. 

The fuck was his deal, anyway?

BAD DREAM.

Boo-hoo. He was trying to build up enough energy for another few days of being awake-- he didn’t have the time to waste babysitting at the front desk while the Soldier threw a hissy fit. Get out of there. He wanted to go back to sleep.

NO.

No? Uh, sorry, fucking what?

NO. 

Barnes mentally kicked at him, and the Soldier responded with a vehement, instantaneous regurgitation of HYDRA memories, cold and cruel and brutal, enough to send an instinctual fear down their shared spine. 

Piss-bad mood today, then. He wasn’t getting any rest anytime soon. 

CONFIRMED.

Fuck off.

The Soldier folded himself into a hazy memory of buying peaches on some mission in Spain, and fucked off. 

Barnes rolled out of bed. His jaw ached where he’s been clenching it in his sleep, and his flesh fingers were stiff from being rolled into a tight fist, sore and itchy in the palms of his hands where he’d dug his fingernails into the skin. He stretched them out individually, touching each one to his thumb in a vain attempt to recalibrate himself after so long spent buried in the memory of a body that wasn’t so… this one. Bucky from the Howling Commandos was similar, but he was a little smaller, a little less muscular, and a lot less metal. The change left him more out of his depth than he’d like to admit. 

As it was, the Soldier didn’t seem to want to come out anytime soon, so he was probably going to be himself again for a day or two, even if he would have liked to try for longer. Being awake drained him, hard, for reasons he didn’t really understand, but Sam still tried to explain to him. Something about psychological fatigue and shared headspaces. Privately, Barnes appreciated the help. Publicly, he pondered the merits of rubbing some fish oil on the harness of Sam’s wings and seeing how long it took him to get the smell out. Maybe he’d do that before he said hello to everyone, start his brief debut with a bang and make Steve do that sunshiny smile again. Piss off Sam and get Steve to stop sulking. Two birds, one stone. 

He hauled himself out of bed and into a brief shower, letting the water burn his skin pink and making the workings of his arm feel at least momentarily warmer than the arctic circle as he poured an unnecessary amount of conditioner into his hair and tried to work some of the ‘lunatic tweaker under a bridge who eats dirt’ out of his face. Soldier sure did a shit job of keeping up his good looks, that was for sure. 

WHAT LOOKS.

Can it, ice cube.

He at least felt human by the time he left, if a little rough around the edges. ‘Rough around the edges’ was pretty much his usual, anyway, so he wasn’t too broken up about it, even if it was going to make Steve a little pouty. The Soldier wouldn’t let him leave the room without some array of weapons on his person, but he managed to negotiate it down to a pistol in the waistband of his sweatpants and a couple knives strapped to his chest. Fucker loved his knives. Barnes could appreciate a good knife, really, but any more than five at a time seemed excessive. The Soldier disagreed. 

The kitchen was already occupied by the time he went looking for food, packed full of people in varying states of wakefulness from Thor’s cheery humming to Barton lying comatose on the floor. Someone smelled strongly of gunpowder, but that wasn’t particularly unusual either, not in a tower full of hyper-paranoid superheroes-slash-assassins. The fact that it was Stark was a little new. He must have been tinkering with Barton and Romanoff’s gear again, if the smears of (what he was fairly sure was) gun oil of his hands and and face was anything to go by. He’d been working a lot since Peter turned out to be a costumed lunatic like the rest of them.

SCARED.

Who, you?

STARK. HE IS SCARED FOR PETER.

Why do you say the kid’s name like it's a question? You know you could call him whatever you wanted, and he’d be happy about it, right? And Stark… Stark’s been through some shit. If Barnes was being honest, he was a little terrified for the Spiderkid, too. He was a lot like Steve, but he at least had less asthma and potentially fatal heart problems to worry about, which was a little comforting. He’d still admit to having a full-scale shutdown when he saw him take a shotgun to the chest. The Soldier hummed his agreement. 

YOU ARE STARING.

He wasn’t. He was just deciding the best way to make himself known without making Stark run for the hills and Romanoff shoot him in the foot. They tended to freak out a little when Barnes caught them off guard, and he couldn’t blame them for it, not with the whole dead parents and trying to kill a couple of ‘em thing. The Soldier flinched away from the thought, and Barnes didn’t try to apologize. If he let himself linger a little longer in the shadows behind the trashy-chic plants, that was his choice, and the Soldier could keep his damn mouth shut. 

Besides, he liked seeing everyone loose and at ease with each other. It was like how the Commandos used to be, back before Bucky keeled over and HYDRA turned his brains into soup. Banner wasn’t antsy, but sleep-clumsy, face planted squarely in the space between Thor’s shoulder blades as the god entertained himself with the waffle iron. Romanoff was more focused on poking Barton with her feet than she was with the location of every weapon in the room, and Stark lacked the wild look in his eyes he got every time Barnes walked in his direction, like he expected him to finish the job and end the Stark legacy right then and there.

TARGET?

Wrong Stark, dipshit.

He let his foot brush against the carpet, and Romanoff found him at the same instant Stark did, though where she went no further than a warning hand against her leg, he reacted far more directly, a kitchen knife appearing in his hand as his posture slid from lax to deadly, twirling the blade between his fingers and falling killer-still, eyes locked on and promising violence if Barnes got too close. It did things to his stomach that he very pointedly ignored. It made the Soldier really, really want to pull the gun. The kitchen fell still, Banner sliding behind Thor’s side and Barton curling a hand under the back of his shirt, still facedown on the floor. 

“If I didn’t know any better, Stark, I’d feel a little threatened,” he said, and the tension disappeared.

“What can I say?” He flourished the knife again, this time with a grin on his face. “I’m just happy to see you.”

They were all still wary of him when he approached, but the weapons were gone, so Barnes took it as a little victory. Made sure to stay out of anyone’s space so as not to freak them out. 

“It’s good to see you, Barnes! We missed you dearly.” Thor lightly brushed a hand over his shoulder, and Barnes fought the instinctual urge to flinch away from it.

“Yeah,” Stark said, snatching the coffee cup Barnes sent his way and draining at least half of it in one go, “nice seeing you instead of the murder machine. Welcome back, by the way; we wept for your absence, blah blah blah, good riddance.”

The Soldier buried himself farther into their mind, wallowing, and Barnes didn’t stop him. 

“Tony!”

“What? We were all thinking it.”

“Hey, I’m plenty fine with being the favorite.” Barnes stepped around Barton’s snoring corpse and reached into the fridge, pulling out a container of mini quiches with Sam’s name written on the top. Stark flashed him a grin that was more teeth than smile, and winked. He returned it. “I’m just surprised to see you hangin’ around with something other than robots. You almost look presentable, too. It’s a little scary, tin man.”

“My raw good looks can do that to the faint of mind,” he shot back, and Barnes snorted. The easy banter was making Banner slowly come out from behind Thor’s back, and some of the tension was bleeding off Romanoff’s shoulders, if only by a fraction. 

“Peter’s running late today,” Banner said, and Barnes made a point to have a his mouth full of quiche when he turned his attention over to the scientist, hunching over the container to make himself look as non-threatening and ridiculous as possible without making it obvious he was trying to be. Banner didn’t flinch away from the attention, at least, so it seemed to do the trick. “ _Tony_ intends on harassing him for it. The rest of us are just trying to enjoy our morning.”

“Nothing wrong with a little hazing.”

“See? Terminator gets it.”

“Recycling your material, Stark? I expected better from you.”

“It’s early!”

Steve bumbled into the kitchen at the same time Romanoff filled another coffee cup, and she scooped it back from Barton’s reach and sent it to him, instead, making Barton say something along the lines of ‘aww, coffee,’ and Steve say ‘fuck it, I’m Captain Russia now.’

The sight of him sleep-rumpled and grouchy made a wash of memories spill to the forefront of Barnes’ mind; uniforms on backwards, showers spent trying to get shampoo in his hair without him falling asleep on Bucky’s shoulder, drawing straws between the Commandos to see who was on wakeup duty for the world’s absolute opposite of a morning person, despite the fact that Bucky almost always did it anyway. There were more still of a smaller, more fragile Steve, hanging on to Bucky’s waist like a particularly stubborn koala, dripping toothpaste and drool out of his mouth as they stood in front of the tiny mirror, coughing and whining when he woke in an attempt to schmooze a few more minutes of sleep, and lamenting that Bucky always saw through it. It made his insides feel warm, even if the memories felt oddly disconnected from the rest of him. Like his body still knew what it was to be someone else, even if his mind didn’t. 

TARGET.

Mission override.

MISSION OVERRIDE: PROTECT.

At least you finally got that through your skull. Barnes was sick and tired of hearing the Soldier try and talk him into killing the guy.

“You’re makin’ Phillips roll in his grave, Stevie.”

Steve’s head snapped up, eyes wide (if not entirely awake) and face pulling into a wide, dimpled smile that felt a little like watching the sun rise up and plant a kiss on his cheek.

“Jesus fuckall,” Stark wheezed, and Barnes had to agree. It was one thing to see Captain America with bedhead and a t-shirt that sat about an inch too short on him, but it was another thing entirely to be faced with the full force of one of his smiles. The _real_ kind, too, not the shitty, USO press tour one. 

“Hey, Buck. ‘S good to see you.”

“You’re just sayin’ that cause I’m holding food.” He offered him a quiche anyway, and made sure to brace himself for the hug that inevitably followed. Unlike him, Steve ran like a furnace, and Barnes was big enough to admit he sort of loved it, even if his conditioning told him otherwise. When he didn’t flinch at the contact, Steve smiled again, and Barton muttered ‘it’s like seeing a puppy in a rainbow’ from his place on the floor. 

Stark pulled another quiche from the pile, and Barnes didn’t miss the way his eyes had glued themselves to the span of skin above Steve’s hips. It made the egg in his mouth taste a little bitter. He ignored it. 

-

Tony, unlike the others, did not wake up, because Tony hadn’t slept, but he was still feeling pretty fucking good standing in a kitchen full of people who were willing to tolerate him most of the time, especially considering one of them was Steve Rogers in a crop top. Good god, the man was like a marble statue. Tony wanted to eat caviar off him. He’d settle for eating _refuse_ off him. Christ. 

It almost outweighed the sick feeling in his stomach that came with standing in the same room as the guy who slaughtered his family. 

Sure, he knew it wasn’t Barnes’ fault, not really, and he actually kind of liked him-- they had a similar sense of humor, he didn’t take Tony’s shit, but never pressed his boundaries, and he at least had the guts to apologize for ruining his childhood, even though he wasn’t the one to pull the trigger-- but he still couldn’t shake the kind of instinctual terror-slash-killing-instinct he got whenever Barnes walked into a room. Steve got pissy with him for it, but he felt less bad knowing that Barnes, himself didn’t care. 

As it was, he knew where everyone kept their lines and didn’t cross them; he stayed out of Tony and Bruce’s space, didn’t go near Clint or Natasha, never so much as set foot in the labs unless he was bleeding, and made an effort to make himself known when he entered a room so as not to spook anybody. He was a whole lot less creepy about it than his killer counterpart, too, which was appreciated, even if nobody other than Tony ever said anything about it. 

Beside him, Bruce chuckled at something Clint said, and leaned against Tony’s shoulder for a moment before recoiling with a disgusted look on his face.

“Oh, you stink.”

“Brucie, you wound me.”

“I could smell you when I walked in.”

“You’re a freaky super soldier, Barnes, you don’t get to say shit.”

“Hey, what’s that smell?”

Every head swiveled toward the door like a tennis match, and Tony took a second to laugh at the idea as Peter stepped out of the elevator, looking windswept and sweaty. The first thing he noticed was the very dark circles under the kid’s eyes, and he frowned. The second thing he noticed was that the jeans he was wearing were very distinctly _not his_ , and he grinned. Must have made that gleeful little evil scientist noise, as Bruce called it, if the pained groan from behind him was anything to go by, and he clapped his hands together with something like mania as the kid walked into the kitchen and started shovelling some food into his mouth. Looked like May’s cooking, god help him.

“Told you.”

“Shut up. Hey, twerp.”

“Hey! Sorry I’m late, guys, I’ll eat fast and get down to the lab right away--”

“Don’t worry about it, Peter,” Bruce said, reaching over the breakfast bar to pull the tupperware container more than an inch away from his chin in an attempt to get him to slow down, which was good, because he looked a little like he was going to start choking if he kept up that speed.

“Yeah. Why don’t you tell us what held you up, instead?”

“Tony, leave him be.”

“I will do no such thing. So how about it?” he prodded Peter’s shoulder.

“Oh, I just slept through my alarm, I guess.”

“Long night?”

“ _Tony._ ”

“Uh… kinda? I stayed up late studying, um, the properties of a vacuum-- hey, you reek, dude.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. I’ll fire you. Anyways, studying? Just you?”

“Dr. Banner won’t let you. And no, I guess not?”

“Oh, no?”

“No? Why are you grilling me on my study habits, Mr. Stark?”

“I’ve told you a thousand times, kid, call me Tony or I’ll smear gun oil on you.”

“Please don’t.”

“So, who were you studying with?”

“Are you going to run background checks on my classmates, again? Because I told you not to do that.”

“No. Just curious who turned off your alarm this morning.”

“Who turned off… Ned wouldn’t turn off my alarm, he just sleeps through it. Wait! Ugh, MJ hates it, I totally forgot. No wonder she kept kicking me.”

Bruce choked on his coffee. Tony inhaled some quiche. From his place on the floor, Clint started cackling, and Steve was starting to turn a very interesting shade of pink. Peter frantically smacked Tony on the back until he stopped coughing, and overall looked very lost.

“Whoa, are you okay? What’s so funny?”

“Pretty sure they’re talking about the fact that you’re wearin’ a women’s size one,” Barnes pointed out, and Peter looked down. Frowned. Tried to shove his hand down one of the pockets. Noticed the rhinestones bedazzled across the back, and promptly clapped his hands over his ass.

“Oh, man! MJ is gonna _kill_ me. But why is that such a big deal? They were just the first things I grabbed off the floor, okay, and I can make... them… work….”

Barnes raised an eyebrow, and Tony could pinpoint the exact second the pieces clicked together in Peter’s head, because his face went from rosy pink to lobster red in the most extraordinary display of color change he’d ever seen outside the cuddlefish family. 

“Wait, no. No, no no. No! It’s not like that! They just came over to study, and stayed the-- Clint, stop laughing! We’re just friends! And-- hey! You’re wearing Dr. Banner’s shirt, you hypocrite!”

“Kid, if I refrained from saying hypocritical things, I don’t think I’d ever speak.”

“Yeah, tell us more about your weird, purely platonic bedmates,” Clint wheezed, and he might have been crying a little. 

“It’s not weird! We sleep together all the time!” Steve went a little closer to fuschia than he’d been a moment ago, and Peter looked on in horror as he dropped his face in his hands. “ _NOT LIKE THAT! _”__

____

____

“I’m gonna pee!” Clint shrieked.

Tony patted Peter on the back.

“You’re going through a transformative time, right now, Peter. Whatever and whoever you choose, you know we’ll support you--”

“Tony, I swear to _god_ \--”

"So long as you’re safe. Remember, condoms protect from more than unwanted pregnancies, so even if there’s no penetration, you should always wear protection,” Natasha put in, and the kid straight-up screamed. Tony joined Clint on the floor, who looked about half a second from passing out. 

“I’M GOING TO THE LAB FOREVER NOBODY IS ALLOWED TO TALK TO ME EVER AGAIN YOU’RE TERRIBLE AND I HATE YOU _BYE_!”

Peter proceeded to use his fucking _superhero web-shooters_ to launch himself across the room and out of sight, and only then did Natasha start laughing, too. If Tony sounded like a supervillain, Natasha’s laughter must have been what the devil sounded like when she made you dance naked on a bed of coals. He loved it.

“Tony, you probably scarred him! He’s the best intern we have, and you’re going to make him quit!” 

“Holy fuck, worth it. I’m framing this, this is the best day of my life. J save to archives. Play this when I die, and make the kid give my eulogy. I’m saving this on tape, I swear to god.” 

“I never thought I’d thank the ruski for hauling my ass out of bed, but here we are.” 

Tony looked up, and Barnes was actually smiling at him. Like, a real-life, up to the eyes, toothy smile. It was… kind of like looking at bigfoot. Riding the Loch Ness monster. With Santa Claus. For a very, very small, fractional, split iota of a second, Tony swore he was giggling. He didn't even know Barnes _could_ giggle. 

“Steve, it’s like fucking… it’s like Dugan. You know, the time with the lace--” 

“ _Bucky!_ ” 

“The _what_? Barnes, I will let you execute me for that fucking story. Complete the set, no holds barred. I am _begging_ you.” 

“ _TONY!_ ” 

“I can’t breathe! I’m gonna die, I’m gonna fucking die! Nat, Nat, holy shit!” 

“You are the worst people I’ve ever met.” 

“Bruce, there’s lace involved! You know how I feel about lace!” 

“Everybody knows how you feel about lace, Tony! You said it on public television!” 

“It needed to be said!” 

Thor cleared his throat, and they looked up. He pointed at the tupperware. 

“Is he going to finish that?” 

Clint actually passed out, this time. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next time ill do a cool chapter 4 realsies i promise!!! its either gonna be a tony/barnes teamup thing or an avengers+peter one!! should b a little more plot if thats the case
> 
> again i cant thank u all enough for ur patience n i read evry one of your comments they rly make my day!!! i love the little ones too they all mean a lot to me <3


	6. tony and barnes Bond over frenchmen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tw for some descriptions of violence and injuries, but nothing too bad there
> 
> also warnings for descriptions of anxiety

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BEEN A HOT MINUTE HUH FELLAS??
> 
> SORRY ABOUT THAT, SCHOOLS BEEN WACK, LIFES BEEN WACK, YOU KNOW HOW IT IS
> 
> that being said this thing absolutely has no update schedule and anything i ever said about it having one is pure horseshit, thank you for your patience
> 
> LONG CHAPTER YEEHAW!!!!

“Natasha.”

“Tony.”

“ _Natasha_.”

“Not that I dislike groveling, but it’s not changing the mission roster.”

“But you’re here! You could be on the quinjet before he is!”

“Clint takes priority. I’d say I’m sorry, except I’m not.”

“Clint’s fine.”

“He’s in a medically induced coma.”

“He’s always in a medically induced coma.”

“...Fair.”

“So you’re coming?”

“No.”

“Witch.”

“Prick.”

Tony closed the video screen and zipped his undersuit up the back (read: made Dummy zip his suit up the back) and stepped into the chest of an older Iron Man suit, looking over the specs again as he went. The old models were crafted with less tech and clunkier reflexes, but a way sexier power cell behind the repulsors; the real shame about his newer ones was that he couldn’t reduce the size of the repulsor cells without sacrificing some of their _oomph_ , but he figured he’d solve that given another few months because he was brilliant and also a genius. And maybe because he’d ask Rhodey to come tinker with it. That always went well. Not for the structural integrity of nearby buildings, of course, but it meant good news for both his science and his sex life, and not a lot was better than that combination, so the integrity problems could go fuck themselves. 

“Stark, hurry your shiny, metal ass up.”

Speaking of compromised integrity.

“JARVIS, remind the sergeant that the Iron Man suits are delicate, finesse machines that require apt preparation to work with maximum functionality.”

“Seeing as your comm is in, sir, I do not believe I see the necessity.”

The faceplate dropped down, and exactly three-point-two-five seconds later, the HUD found and targeted Barnes on the helipad, siphoning off the feeds from his arm’s biometrics and lining them up in a neat paragraph below the left corner of Tony’s vision, listing everything from his heartrate to the exact number of meters he was from the suit’s very dashing and deeply anxiety-ridden engineer. This was the second reason he picked the Mark 34. 

“J, what have I told you about backtalk?”

“Of course, sir. Forgive me.”

“Just this time.”

Barnes was already in the pilot’s seat by the time Tony stepped in, kicking on the engines and glancing over the dashboard with something like disinterest, his mouth moving but no words coming out. Probably talking to his murder twin, because he did that sometimes, which was great, super awesome, loved that. Stoked to have the guy who killed his parents stuck in a pressurized aircraft with him for the next two hours. Which was also why he was wearing the suit, just in case of a freak accident in which Tony needed to blow a hole in the plane and get the fuck out of dodge. 

Mission was gonna be peachy. 

“Call came in ten minutes ago. Some dumb assholes thought holding a world leader hostage was a great idea.”

“It’s the Spanish guy, right?”

“French.”

“Boo, the French are mean.”

“Thought you’d like ‘em. They love overpriced bullshit, don’t they?”

Tony _tsked_ at him. “It’s all in the cuisine. Their food lacks soul, Barnsy. I weep for it.”

Barnes snorted, leaning back in his chair as he dropped his hand on the accelerator and left it there. Looked up at Tony. Stared. 

“Could probably do this solo,” he said.

Something something thank Jesus the lord amen. No mission. He was out. Free bird, back to the lab to drink coffee and burn his fingertips with no need to worry about instinctively killing a guy he worked with if said guy moved too fast. Then again, if Tony took the get out of jail free card-- which it was; a way out in neon flashing letters (a way out, a way out, a way out, a way o)-- the others would get all cranky with him for ‘poor teamwork,’ and ‘needing to learn to play nice,’ which was ridiculous, because Tony was plenty nice and a great teammate and also sexy, and if he didn’t go, Barnes would probably get himself killed, which would kill Steve, which would kill Sam, and Natasha, and Clint, and everyone would be dead and it would all be his fault because he was the worst person known to man. 

“You could, or I could?” he asked instead of screaming.

“Either.”

“Flatterer.”

Barnes looked back to the console.

“Offer still standin’.”

“Pass.”

He pushed the accelerator, the plane took flight, and Tony tried not to heave inside his helmet. JARVIS spoke softly over the speakers, counting down numbers in a slow, steady rhythm that Tony grabbed onto with everything he had, tossing himself down in a seat and spinning an abandoned arrow between his metal fingers. 

“Play me something nice, J,” he told the HUD, and leaned back with an easy sigh as ACDC pumped through the headpiece, all-encompassing and familiar like the hum of machinery over his body and the four inches of metal over his chest, vibranium-reinforced and impact absorbent where nothing could ever carve through it again. He turned up the internal temperature by nine degrees. 

The thing was, he didn’t dislike Barnes. Really. Barnes was okay. Great guy, if a little twitchy. Were it just him, Tony would have probably been giving Rhodey greys, painting the town red with the two of them. But he wasn’t. The Winter Soldier was just as much a part of him as anything else, as Sam frequently reminded them and Steve frequently attempted to ignore, and that meant there was always going to be some part of him that looked at everyone like a target and had to be talked out of killing every living thing in a twenty foot radius. And because Tony and/or the people he loved usually fell within that radius, he was a little wary. Barnes knew it, he knew it, and they got that about each other. Just the way it was. Easy-peasy.

The others (Steve) strongly disagreed.

Stop treating him differently, Tony. He’s getting better, Tony. If you’d just give him a chance, Tony. Tony, Tony, Tony. Not good enough, but what else was new.

“Gonna blow your ears out, like that,” Barnes grunted, and stood from the pilot’s seat, leaning out of the cockpit just enough to snag something from the snack cooler and slump against the plane’s hull. He didn’t step into the loading bay, and Tony was grateful for that. Barnes knew what Tony’s space was, and he kept the hell out of it. Another reason they got on great.

“I’ll just make myself new ones. Try that integrated implant Clint’s too chicken to let me give him.”

“Isn’t that one supposed to be drilled into his brain, or something?”

“Only a little. But I tell a story about my cerebral uplink malfunctioning _one time_ and he runs for the hills. Like I haven’t worked that kink out. Unbelievable.”

Barnes tapped his flesh forearm, and Tony tried to ignore the way the light shone off the other. The rational human person in his brain said ‘horrible nightmare machine that killed his family and could shatter a windpipe like breaking a chip in two.’ The engineer in his brain said ‘hubba hubba,’ and was currently trying to undo the protective upper plating with his eyes.

“That’s the one hooked up to those sensors in your arms, yeah?”

“Mm-hmm. I got ‘em working on full accuracy eighty-nine percent of the time, now.”

He had them working on ninety-five percent accuracy seventy percent of the time, but Barnes didn’t need to know that. Best not to give the Soldier a bigger target to stick his claws in. He’d fixed the overheating problem, though. Didn’t need his arms burning up like they did after his flight to Tennessee. 

“What happens eleven percent of the time?”

“Piece of armor gets uppity and I crack a rib, get a black eye, or bruise one of my balls.”

Barnes winced in sympathy, and Tony nodded.

“Seems like a design flaw.”

“I’m working on it.”

“Sirs, the current trajectory places us approximately seven minutes from arrival.”

“Thanks, J.”

Barnes rolled his shoulders and did a brief inventory of his person, pressing his hands to various pockets and sheaths on his body before dropping back into the pilot’s seat, stripping his gun down, again. In his helmet, JARVIS ran a brief system diagnostic that had the armor hissing and clicking, repulsors charging up before winding down over and over. 

“How we doing this?” Barnes asked.

“Depends. JARVIS, get me an eye above.”

He picked over the camera feed JARVIS presented to him for a moment, thinking. Strategy might not be his strongest point, but geometry made sense. He could move Clint around pretty well, and when Barnes had a rifle on his back, they were pretty much the same from a tactical standpoint. Also, if he put Barnes on a roof, he didn’t need to have him swinging a gun around his vicinity. 

“I can drop you on a roof forty yards from the building and you’ll cover me while I bring in the big guns.”

“Glass on bureaucratic buildings is bulletproof, these days, Stark.”

Great. Awesome. Hated that he knew that.

“Then I’ll take out the windows in your line of sight on my way in.”

“Sounds like a lot of bogeys in there. You gonna be able to take ‘em all?”

Tony briefly considered making a joke about taking things, but decided those were best served for Clint and Natasha’s sense of humor. 

“Insulting my prowess, soldier?”

He snorted. “Wouldn’t dream of it, tin can. Whatever you say.”

Barnes landed the jet on a rooftop three blocks over, and Tony managed to haul him to his designated perch without wanting to scream too loudly, so in his mind, things were going well. JARVIS linked him up to the local authorities, filtering the French through his translation program a couple milliseconds slower than Tony would have liked, and he made a note to work on the processing speed when they got back. Twenty targets. Armed. Anti-mutant insurgents, or something-- disagreed with the Accords ‘letting fucking ‘mutes run around’ in the general public. Boo hoo hoo. Should have picked a better career than being a bitch.

In the corner of his HUD, Tony watched Barnes’ pulse tick lower and lower as he got into position, almost resting at a sleeping rate by the time Tony’d circled the building to find his entry point. Drop in from the east side, cover the dignitary, blow out the windows, and start putting toasty holes in gunmen. Great plan.

He did that.

Glass shards spewed across the floor as Tony skidded into the dignitary’s very nice penthouse suite slash office-- great carpets, really, nice mahogany table, fancy paintings on the walls-- placing his body between the gunners and the old man shivering in his cushy chair, repulsors raised. Nobody was firing their guns, though, staring slack-jawed at him instead, so he gave them an opportunity to back out. Because he was nice like that.

“Here’s a deal: get lost, and I won’t kill everyone in the room. Fairsies?” 

They started shooting at him. Tony blew out the window. The old man, who he was _pretty_ sure was named Bourdillon, screamed. Barnes shot a guy in the head before all the glass hit the floor. It was going well; gunners were getting thrown around the room (and one or two might have fallen out of the building, somehow, in a way that Tony had nothing to do with), the armor was holding fast, Bourdillon was still screaming and wiggling around, and Tony thought this time, _this time_ was going to go okay for him. He’d do something routine and small without having to sit in the med bay when he got back.

Then, of course, everything went to hell. Another nine shooters spilled out of another room, and Tony failed to bite back a very long, very colorful string of curses as they dragged a frightened young woman with them, arms wrapped protectively over a stomach that was just a little too round for the rest of her wiry little body. He took a brief moment to gag, because she couldn’t have been older than twenty-two and Bourdillon was in his sixties, and lowered his repulsors.

“Get away from the old shit!” one shooter screamed, digging his gun into the side of the woman’s face as she shrieked, face smeared with makeup and tears. Poor kid. “Step back, or I’ll fucking kill her!”

Tony raised his hands up, slowly, to rest above his head.

“I said get away!”

The voice came out tinny and stilted through the translation program, like the audio in his old ransom video. 

“Let’s talk,” Tony tried. Jarvis spat the voice out of his helmet a moment later, choppily accented and robotic. “You want money? I have money. Lots, actually.”

“We don’t want your shit money, mutant!”

“I’m human, so.” he shrugged. “Awkward.”

“Shoot them!” Bourdillon cried. “Shoot them now!”

“You know, I would, but they have a hostage, dumbshit.”

“Fucking shoot her too! I don’t care, get me out of here!”

The woman made a stricken expression and proceeded to say a string of words that JARVIS deemed unimportant to translate, and Tony filed away to research and memorize later.

“You really don’t get the whole ‘super hero’ thing, do you?”

He was stalling, because the situation was turning into a royal shitshow, and he was going to need backup for it to go smoothly. Where the hell was Barnes? Tony knew he had grappling gear on him-- he should have been on the floor below by now, at least-- but the distance counter in the corner of his HUD stayed static, mocking him for his vain hope of getting some god damn backup in this house, for once. By God, he was turning into his mother. 

“See?” the gunner shouted. “He is a monster, like the rest of them! He doesn’t care about humanity, only his band of freak vigilantes!”

Tony wasn’t listening, because he was too busy flipping through every article and PR report that had been filed on Bourdillon in the last two years and cataloguing them under ‘fucked up,’ ‘gross,’ ‘I did that,’ and ‘not bad.’ The former heavily outweighed the latter of the list, but Tony shuddered at the amount that fell into the third category, considering the rest. On a scale of one to ten, letting Bourdillon get murdered was probably, like, a seven on the publicity nightmare scale, and therefore should probably be avoided if only because it would make Pepper angry. Letting the other hostage die was significantly lower on the scale, but Tony would rather light the crusty son of a bitch behind him on fire than getting her killed, so he really needed to figure out which bullet to stick between his teeth, and fast. 

Barnes still hadn’t moved.

“Hey,” he said. The gunners shifted uneasily on their feet, hands tightening on their weapons.

He then proceeded to blast off Bourdillon’s arm below the elbow. 

“What the _FUCK_?” screamed Bourdillon, Barnes, three gunners, and the woman, all at once.

“Surprise!” Tony cheered, and shot the gunner holding the woman straight through the head, kicking over Bourdillon’s chair and letting the wheels whisk his screaming, bloody lump of a body behind the kitchen island as the remaining gunners scrambled to regroup, scattering like roaches as he popped a flashbang and dropped out of the suit, directing it to the woman and taking her out the window to the emergency services below. Which was good, because it meant she was safe and off Tony’s conscience, but not ideal, because he was in fact standing in a room with eight armed men, a wounded hostage, and no weapon. Bad plan. He booked it to join Bourdillon behind the island and only took a single glancing bullet to the leg for it.

The dignitary greeted him with an elegant, sprawling, and entirely incoherent spew of French, clutching the remains of his arm and writhing in a pool of his own blood like some sort of gross, squishy beetle.

He did, however, have a gun and a bottle of potently acidic cleaner under his sink, so Tony was now armed and dangerous again. 

One gunner attempted to go overtop the island, which was stupid, and Tony dropped him with a bullet to the side of the face, wrinkling his nose at the mess as Bourdillon gagged behind him. Another pair flanked them, and he raised both weapons, shooting one down and giving the other a face full of paint-stripping disinfectant before treating them to the same, bullet-flavored demise. He leaned around the side of the island, hefting one body up beside him as a shield as he took another two shooters down, still unsteady on their feet from the flashbang, and took a shot to the shoulder for his trouble, but he’d been through a lot worse, so he kept going. The armor made its reappearance right on time, shattering through (hopefully, a non load-bearing) wall and directly into a gunner, knocking them to the floor before blasting a hole through their chest and probably the next three floors with the center repulsor, and finally turning the remaining pair’s faces into a semblance of those gross hot dogs that fell between the grill. 

“That went well,” he said to no one in particular, and Bourdillon kicked him. 

Barnes said nothing as Tony flew his squealing chunk of hostage down to street level and dropped him in the hands of paramedics, but not before pointing out that he did, in fact, not only save the guy’s life, but was preventing a scandal over the conspicuously unreleased footage of him condemning a civilian and his own bastard child to death, so he was blessedly quiet by the time the French police started asking him what exactly had happened upstairs. 

Barnes was less quiet in person.

“What the fuck was that, Stark?” he snarled, and Tony fought hard against the instinct to step back from him as he stalked the rooftop. 

“I could ask you the same thing, you know.”

“Me? _Me_?”

“Yeah! Where the hell were you?”

“Right the fuck where you _told_ me to be!”

Huh. He did do that. 

“You gonna yell at me now for followin’ your goddamn stupid-ass fucking instructions? Huh?”

“You listened.”

“Yes, I listened! You told me to be up here, and I--”

“No, you. Okay, _nobody_ listens to me.”

Really. If someone put him on planning and he got in trouble, they didn’t listen when he said to stay put. Everybody came for Tony, because Tony was their soft, squishy human guy who did really stupid shit. They listened to Natasha, because she was more capable than all of them put together, and they listened to Clint, who gave orders so rarely they trusted said orders when he did, and the Hulk was basically unkillable, but Tony was Tony, so… no. Nobody listened to Tony. Which, while really irritating, he couldn’t exactly blame them for, because he tended to be pretty fucking stupid when it came to tactical decisions. 

“What? You mean, you went in there expecting me to just, just know, somehow, through fucking telepathy, when I was supposed to waltz in and save you from your own shitty plan?”

“I mean. Kind of, yeah.”

Barnes gave him a look that was deeply reminiscent of the one Pepper gave him the time he told her he didn’t know when his birthday was. He was pretty sure it was in June.

“In my defense, literally nobody listens to me. That’s how we’ve always worked.”

“And you just. Went in.”

“Uh. Yeah?”

“Out of my line of sight.”

“Oh, yeah. Hmm. Didn’t think about that when I got in the kitchen.”

“You didn’t--” Barnes took a very, very deep breath and stared at a spot somewhere far, far beyond the skyline for about fifteen seconds. “You know what? Sure. Fuck it.”

“I get that a lot.”

“Are you hurt, at least?”

“No?”

“Sir has sustained a minor wound to the left calf, and a bullet has passed through his right shoulder without contacting any major arteries. I would suggest applying treatment to both, though neither are immediately life-threatening.”

“That’s what I forgot. Oops. It’s fine, I’ve had worse.”

Barnes dragged two hands down his face, then frowned.

“Hey.” Snapped his fingers to the left of Tony’s eyes, and it took him a moment to follow the movement. “You sure you’re not concussed, or something? JARVIS, he going into shock?”

Was he going into shock? Why was he going into shock? He did this all the time, there was no reason for him to go into shock. JARVIS prevent shock.

“It seems you are correct: Sir is currently going into shock. I would assume it is due to a lack of sleep.”

He got plenty of sleep. Okay, he did not get plenty of sleep, ever, but that had never put him into shock before. JARVIS was lying. Why was JARVIS lying?

“Sir,” the AI said softly, pitched the way that meant he was speaking to Tony alone. “I believe you are beginning to panic over the possibility of sergeant Barnes treating your injuries.”

Oh. That made sense. He was, in fact, very concerned about that, to the point where he sort of wanted to throw up, scream, and fly to the furthest corner of fuckall nowhere he could find, forever. JARVIS started counting again, and Tony very smoothly kept his hyperventilation on the down low.

He was jerked out of his stupor by Barnes physically moving him into the plane, and after a moment of frantic arguing with JARVIS, Tony was spat out of the armor and heaved up onto one of the exam tables as Barnes lifted the plane off the ground and Tony was left trying to choke back the panic of being alone, trapped, and bared in a room with the Winter Soldier.

The armor was a comforting presence standing at his back, but it wasn’t six inches of gold-titanium alloy over the reactor, so if Tony was a little hesitant as Barnes approached him with the medkit, that was perfectly reasonable and Jesus fucking Christ this was awful he wished absolutely anyone else was in this plane with him he was going to die. 

Barnes looked him over for a moment as he settled into the chair opposite the table, sat to the left of Tony’s knees so his arm was facing away, which was appreciated, but didn’t do all that much to actually soothe anyone. The sergeant was strung tight like a wire, too, folded in on himself like a crumpled piece of paper, but the timid posture did nothing to change the huge set of his shoulders and the soft click of machinery as a component in his arm caught, tick-tick-ticking in a rhythm that made the chunk of weaponry impossible to ignore. Tony would offer to fix it, except he was pretty sure he’d literally rather piss glass. 

“Stark.”

“Yes?”

“I’m not gonna hurt you.”

“Again,” Tony spat before he could stop himself, and didn’t actually feel all that bad for saying it. Barnes pursed his lips and briefly closed his eyes, but he didn’t flinch.

“Again.”

“We could leave it until we get back. That’s fine, I’d be fine.”

“Sir--”

“JARVIS, if you say another fucking word, I’m gonna lose it.”

Barnes shifted for a moment and stood, reaching into one of his many holsters and pulling out a pistol in a move so slow it could have been through molasses, but that had both Tony and the suit raising defensive hands.

“It was Winter, before,” Barnes explained as he sat back down, making a careful and deliberate move for Tony’s good hand. He allowed it, if only because he knew he wouldn’t be able to force a refusal if he tried. “In Siberia.” The metal arm never touched Tony’s skin, but it got close enough that he could feel the chill of it, and he swallowed, the defensive repulsors warming at the uptick in his heartbeat. The pistol grip was placed in his palm, and Tony clung to it like a lifeline. Familiar. “Doesn’t change the fact I let it happen. I’d say I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again, but that’s not gonna make anyone feel better.”

Barnes took a loose hold of Tony’s wrist where he clutched the gun white-knuckled but sure in his hand, and guided it up to press into the skin of his forehead, square between his eyes where his hair had begun to fall from its tie. Tabbed the safety. Let go.

“So you make sure it doesn’t happen.”

Tony exhaled, pressing the metal more firmly into Barnes’ face, hating the way it made his pulse slow and breathing even out. Holding a broken man at gunpoint calmed him down, and he called himself a hero? He was a monster. Merchant of Death, like a shadow he’d never shake. Despicable. The tabloids were right about him being cruel.

“Steve would be really cranky if I shot you in the head.”

“Steve ain’t here. You think I’m gonna break, tell him I got taken down by a bogey I missed. Cry a little. Tears get him every time.”

“Pretty morbid of you.”

Barnes shrugged.

“Got a brand to keep.”

“What brand is that? Hot Topic?”

“Just let me fix your damn shoulder, Stark.”

And wildly enough, Tony didn’t lose his whole shit when Barnes reached for him again. Sure, his fingers might have gotten a little (VERY) itchy, but Barnes still had an intact skull, so no harm, no foul, right? Strangely, the air _lost_ its tension as they sat in silence, despite the obvious reasons it shouldn’t have, and the atmosphere was a very fragile kind of… casual. As casual as it could be with Barnes packing gauze into Tony’s leaking bullet wounds while Tony pointed a gun at his head. But that was just them. Tony had a comfort zone that was hard to accommodate, and Barnes had a kind of deadliness to him that was hard to take on trust alone. 

They _got_ that about each other. 

Despite everything, the two of them had completed a decently high-profile mission with minimal casualties, and they were ending it without multiple panic attacks or gross amounts of anxious tension. No yelling from Steve, no patronizing from Sam, none if it. They worked it out their damn selves, like mature adults. With guns.

Barnes finished wrapping his shoulder and pulled away, and Tony tried not to let the imprint of the barrel that lingered in the center of his forehead haunt him. Instead, he tabbed the safety back on and handed the gun back, flashing a grin that was more gritted teeth than smile but was a step forward from hiding, and Barnes gave him the tiniest quirk of the mouth in return before he stood up and returned to his own space, far away, folded into the cockpit, and Tony could finally breathe normally again. The moment ended. JARVIS let him back into the suit. There was no sound except that of the whirring engines and the suit’s quiet processing, melodic in his ears, as the rest of the ride remained silent, but somehow not uncomfortably so. Tony took some time to reflect and came to the following:

The Soldier could go fuck himself with a whole belt sander. 

Barnes, though? He was alright.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you have no idea how much ur kind comments mean to me!!! every time i get one it fills me w so much inspiration and it powers me through even when im feeling down!!!! yall absolutely make my day <333


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